The other day, Jack said that he was bored. Now I realize I could have said, "Really? How about doing the dishes?" That is what our parents always said...but instead I said, "Why don't you play your new video game?"
"I finished it." He finished it. The game he got for Christmas 2 months ago, and he finished it.
"What do you mean you finished it?" I asked. "Can't you start over and play a new game?"
"No," says Jack..."I've finished all the levels."
Wow. A $60 video game he asked for, for months before it was released, and he is done with it? "Why cant you play it again and get better at it?" I asked him.
"No, it would be boring to do it again," he explained like I was the child.
I was thinking of this conversation later that day when thinking about how young people in the workforce behave these days. They truly are the video game generation. Short attention span and wanting a new game as soon as they finish the task at hand.
When we were kids there were two games: Pong and Space Invaders. The different "levels" were nothing more than the game just getting faster and faster. When you finished all the levels, you played it again because there just weren't any other games for you to play. By the time Pacman and Frogger came out, we had mastered Pong and Space Invaders. You could say we were beyond finished with them. But we still played them because we still only had four games!
This prepared us well for the workforce where you started on the bottom rung and you stayed there long after you had mastered the tasks, and "finished it." It prepared us well to do repetitive tasks for little thanks and to not always be looking out for the next big thing. After all, for most of us, even if there were more games, our parents would not have been able to afford the exhorbitant prices of them, and would have sent us outside to play instead.
Outside is where we learned to play games and to work as a team, and to understand that every game had a winner and a loser. It is always better to be the winner. The winner got the trophy. This prepared us for the workplace where only truly great performance is recognized, and mediocrity is tolerated, but not celebrated.
I think that these days we have prepared the video game generation to enter the workforce at the bottom, to master that "level" in no time, and to begin asking for praise and a raise. I cannot quite get used to how much feedback this generation requires. I have been told that it is for us to adapt to them, and to learn to praise them often and profusely, as they are used to getting trophies merely for playing the game, rather than for winning. They have been told by their parents how special and terrific they are at every turn, and when they hit the workforce and no one praises them simply for doing their jobs, they don't understand.
And after they master that first level, they want a promotion. Because it is all about making your way up the levels in the video game generation. Never mind that it took us years of toiling at the bottom to move up the ranks. For this generation, the bottom is not just a place to start, but it is the first level in the game. They dont seem to understand that you don't move automatically to the next level after you have mastered the first. In fact, you don't move to the next level until you employer decides that you can be of some other and better use to him. It really has nothing to do with your desire to move up at all. You might toil at the first level for years after you had mastered it, and then skip 2 levels simply because you are needed there. And no one gives you a "participant" ribbon just for showing up. Your praise is your paycheck!
I guess we have done our kids no favors, buying them all the latest games, driving them to soccer and telling them how great they are even if they stink at soccer and get C's in math. Perhaps we should have let them fight their own battles at school instead of interfering when a teacher gave them a bad grade. The world even has a name for us: helicopter parents. I've read that when employers recruit this video game generation, they also focus on the parents, who want to be sure junior gets time off for Aunt Lucy's wedding and has an ergonomic workstation so his carpel tunnel doesn't act up. Is the cafeteria peanut-free?
My parents never once called my employer...for any reason! I would have been mortified. I was an adult trying to impress other adults. The heli-mom thing would have blown my image as a responsible adult...after all, if I needed my mommy, I wouldn't have seemed very responsible, now would I? I guess that the video game generation has such high self-esteem that mommy coming along on the job interview doesn't bother them...
I guess I am just an old fart who doesn't want to get with the times, but I refuse to reward mediocrity, to pay more for less and deal with mama drama on the job! But what do I know? I was the one playing Pong for a full year straight. These kids can win the Vietnam, Korean and both Iraqi wars all within a year. Maybe I should just accept that it's "game over" for Gen X, and make way for the video game kids...and their mommies!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Welcome to Planet Cheeseburger
So if you have taken the trouble to click the link to planetcheeseburger.blogspot.com, you are probably wondering what the hell is Planet Cheeseburger, and why I am here...
Planet Cheeseburger is my life. It all started many years ago when my youngest son Jack was diagnosed with Aspergers, which is on the autism spectrum but not what you usually think of when someone says "autism". Aspergers is more like your weird Uncle Fred who could talk for hours about the latest space shuttle mission, but could not engage in small talk of any sort. Or that kid in your high school who would never look you in the eye and sat on a bench at lunch drawing in a book, not having any friends, but not seeming to be bothered by that either.
That is Jack. Except Jack is very handsome and wickedly funny. He is clever and everyone he meets loves him. My partner (and everyone hates when I call him my partner because it makes us sound gay. Not that there is anything wrong with being gay; we are just not that interesting,) once told him "There is nothing wrong with you Jack. You're normal. I don't think you have Aspergers at all. I think you have Cheeseburgers!" He figured out how wrong he was when Jack punched him in the face for ejecting a DVD that Jack had been watching, and his rigidity would not allow him to wait for the DVD to be ejected and cleaned.
And so it was that Jack began life with Cheeseburgers...but anyone who has a Cheeseburger in the family knows that you all live your lives with it, here on Planet Cheeseburger.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just start with how I came to settle on Planet Cheeseburger. My first child, Harry was difficult from day one. He came into the world kicking and screaming, (emphasis on screaming). It took a doctor, four interns and a pair of forceps to get him to come out of his cozy little world. And boy was he mad about that. He did not sleep for about 3 years...neither did I. He needed to be carried everywhere he went. If I didn't, he would look up at me, holding up his chubby little hands saying "uppy-uppy!" So I simply had to carry him. (Read: I spoiled him rotten.)
There are pictures of me carrying him around while nine months pregnant with his little brother Jack. He has a Cheshire cat smile on his face. I'm sure he was thinking, "I've got her all figured out. She's wrapped around my sticky little finger. Life is sweet!"
Little did he know that everything was about to change forever! On the day I went into labor with Jack, I boarded a train for New York to see my OB-GYN. Harry would not let go of me, crying as Grandma took him out of my arms. He must have known something was up, because I never came home that night. The doc sent me to Lenox Hill Hospital where I waited patiently for Jack...except Jack was not Jack back then. He was Charley.
So I'm waiting for Charley, but nothing is happening. In fact, I was no longer 6 centimeters (or sauntimeters, as my very odd OB pronounced it. I'll fill you in on why she is odd another time...) I had regressed back to 5, and Dr. Odd was not amused. Out came the pitocen drip. I was mildly terrified, recalling the painful ordeal with Harry, still fresh in my mind.
But it could not have been more different, as Charley could not wait to get out. The doctor, (Dr. Odd's husband, as I apparently had not followed Dr. Odd's schedule) held him up and declared him a big boy! The nurse then placed him on my chest, where he promptly peed on me. I smiled, finally understanding the beauty of those first moments, ones I had missed with Harry, since they wisked him away and spent the next 45 minutes stitching me up.
The nurse cleaned and weighed him, 8 pounds 13 ounces, and asked me what his name was. "Charley, or maybe Jack, I haven't decided." She held up the little pink bundle, looked him in the eye and said simply, "Jack. This one is definitely a Jack.". And so he was...
Compared to my experience with Harry, Jack was very different baby. He didn't cry much. He slept through the night after 10 days. He laughed and played, but did not require the constant attention that Harry had. (Oh, and I should mention at this point that Harry was pissed about this new addition to the family. "Take him back," he begged me. Another time while I was feeding Jack, who was always hungry, he said to me, "Can you take that off your boob and read me a story?")
After a few months, I went back to work, and both boys went back to daycare. And life went on as always. But as Jack approached his first birthday, I felt that I hardly knew him. He was a good baby. He was charming and smiled a lot. But he didn't seem like he was "mine". I figured I just needed to spend more time with him, as work and two boys had made it impossible for me to bond with him as I did Harry.
I remember that I quit my job a few weeks before 9/11. So Jack and I watched in horror while he ate breakfast. Most people did not even know I had quit my job, so people called all day. It was the first day of Harry's pre-school. While Harry was in class, Jack and I stayed in a nearby shop, (like the rest of the world we had no idea what would happen next, and I didn't want to be far from either boy). While there, Jack began a lifelong friendship with the shop-owner, Gina. Over the next several years, Gina and her life experiences would cross with ours over and over again.
In the next few years, Jack became more animated with me, and I adored him. He was so easy. He never cried and was just happy to be along for the ride. He and I were pals. But after a few years, when he started pre-school, I decided it was time for me to go back to work. We found a kind and gentle nanny who took to Jack like a duck to water. And while he liked her, he was aloof, just as he had been to me in the beginning. (Meanwhile, Harry was livid that I would dare go back to work and leave him with "that woman!" I still don't think he is over it!)
I did not realize until years later that his aloof personality was likely an early sign of his Aspergers. The second sign, which also slipped right by me was his difficulties at pre-school. The Director of his school could not put her finger on it, but after two years left me with the advice that I should have his school district monitor him closely, as he was just not developing socially the way they had expected. He was a puzzling kid, because he had friends and playdates, and he would talk to other children, but it was all on his terms. And he did not seem to understand that the other kids did not always want to be hugged or touched. Sometimes he would knock kids down who were not expecting it.
But more than that, he did not do as he was told. Not that any kid does, but with him, it was a way of life. If he did not see a reason to do X, he simply would refuse. And no punishment would make him do it.
He had always told me he did not like school. He only went 2 days a week because of that. Still, he made it through without any major incident, so I was totally unprepared for what came next...
Planet Cheeseburger is my life. It all started many years ago when my youngest son Jack was diagnosed with Aspergers, which is on the autism spectrum but not what you usually think of when someone says "autism". Aspergers is more like your weird Uncle Fred who could talk for hours about the latest space shuttle mission, but could not engage in small talk of any sort. Or that kid in your high school who would never look you in the eye and sat on a bench at lunch drawing in a book, not having any friends, but not seeming to be bothered by that either.
That is Jack. Except Jack is very handsome and wickedly funny. He is clever and everyone he meets loves him. My partner (and everyone hates when I call him my partner because it makes us sound gay. Not that there is anything wrong with being gay; we are just not that interesting,) once told him "There is nothing wrong with you Jack. You're normal. I don't think you have Aspergers at all. I think you have Cheeseburgers!" He figured out how wrong he was when Jack punched him in the face for ejecting a DVD that Jack had been watching, and his rigidity would not allow him to wait for the DVD to be ejected and cleaned.
And so it was that Jack began life with Cheeseburgers...but anyone who has a Cheeseburger in the family knows that you all live your lives with it, here on Planet Cheeseburger.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just start with how I came to settle on Planet Cheeseburger. My first child, Harry was difficult from day one. He came into the world kicking and screaming, (emphasis on screaming). It took a doctor, four interns and a pair of forceps to get him to come out of his cozy little world. And boy was he mad about that. He did not sleep for about 3 years...neither did I. He needed to be carried everywhere he went. If I didn't, he would look up at me, holding up his chubby little hands saying "uppy-uppy!" So I simply had to carry him. (Read: I spoiled him rotten.)
There are pictures of me carrying him around while nine months pregnant with his little brother Jack. He has a Cheshire cat smile on his face. I'm sure he was thinking, "I've got her all figured out. She's wrapped around my sticky little finger. Life is sweet!"
Little did he know that everything was about to change forever! On the day I went into labor with Jack, I boarded a train for New York to see my OB-GYN. Harry would not let go of me, crying as Grandma took him out of my arms. He must have known something was up, because I never came home that night. The doc sent me to Lenox Hill Hospital where I waited patiently for Jack...except Jack was not Jack back then. He was Charley.
So I'm waiting for Charley, but nothing is happening. In fact, I was no longer 6 centimeters (or sauntimeters, as my very odd OB pronounced it. I'll fill you in on why she is odd another time...) I had regressed back to 5, and Dr. Odd was not amused. Out came the pitocen drip. I was mildly terrified, recalling the painful ordeal with Harry, still fresh in my mind.
But it could not have been more different, as Charley could not wait to get out. The doctor, (Dr. Odd's husband, as I apparently had not followed Dr. Odd's schedule) held him up and declared him a big boy! The nurse then placed him on my chest, where he promptly peed on me. I smiled, finally understanding the beauty of those first moments, ones I had missed with Harry, since they wisked him away and spent the next 45 minutes stitching me up.
The nurse cleaned and weighed him, 8 pounds 13 ounces, and asked me what his name was. "Charley, or maybe Jack, I haven't decided." She held up the little pink bundle, looked him in the eye and said simply, "Jack. This one is definitely a Jack.". And so he was...
Compared to my experience with Harry, Jack was very different baby. He didn't cry much. He slept through the night after 10 days. He laughed and played, but did not require the constant attention that Harry had. (Oh, and I should mention at this point that Harry was pissed about this new addition to the family. "Take him back," he begged me. Another time while I was feeding Jack, who was always hungry, he said to me, "Can you take that off your boob and read me a story?")
After a few months, I went back to work, and both boys went back to daycare. And life went on as always. But as Jack approached his first birthday, I felt that I hardly knew him. He was a good baby. He was charming and smiled a lot. But he didn't seem like he was "mine". I figured I just needed to spend more time with him, as work and two boys had made it impossible for me to bond with him as I did Harry.
I remember that I quit my job a few weeks before 9/11. So Jack and I watched in horror while he ate breakfast. Most people did not even know I had quit my job, so people called all day. It was the first day of Harry's pre-school. While Harry was in class, Jack and I stayed in a nearby shop, (like the rest of the world we had no idea what would happen next, and I didn't want to be far from either boy). While there, Jack began a lifelong friendship with the shop-owner, Gina. Over the next several years, Gina and her life experiences would cross with ours over and over again.
In the next few years, Jack became more animated with me, and I adored him. He was so easy. He never cried and was just happy to be along for the ride. He and I were pals. But after a few years, when he started pre-school, I decided it was time for me to go back to work. We found a kind and gentle nanny who took to Jack like a duck to water. And while he liked her, he was aloof, just as he had been to me in the beginning. (Meanwhile, Harry was livid that I would dare go back to work and leave him with "that woman!" I still don't think he is over it!)
I did not realize until years later that his aloof personality was likely an early sign of his Aspergers. The second sign, which also slipped right by me was his difficulties at pre-school. The Director of his school could not put her finger on it, but after two years left me with the advice that I should have his school district monitor him closely, as he was just not developing socially the way they had expected. He was a puzzling kid, because he had friends and playdates, and he would talk to other children, but it was all on his terms. And he did not seem to understand that the other kids did not always want to be hugged or touched. Sometimes he would knock kids down who were not expecting it.
But more than that, he did not do as he was told. Not that any kid does, but with him, it was a way of life. If he did not see a reason to do X, he simply would refuse. And no punishment would make him do it.
He had always told me he did not like school. He only went 2 days a week because of that. Still, he made it through without any major incident, so I was totally unprepared for what came next...
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