Kevin+Gold's+Memories...

=Memories of My Childhood... = =By: Kevin Gold = “Adults believe it is good for children and parents to be together, but more and more they live their everyday lives apart from each other” (Livingstone, 2002, p. 7). I believe this statement to be so true and it holds so much weight with me, particularly based on the way I was raised. It seemed as though you were only given two options as a child and they were to either go outside to play or to go to your room and watch T.V. or play video games. Most parents had little to no interaction with their children as the media world began to unfold within the households of kids my age. I remember the time when the Nintendo 64 had just come out and all of my friends were getting them, but my mom just was not able to afford one for me. My friends would come to school with stories of how their parents would allow them to have dinner in their rooms just so they could finish their game. I mention this because it pinpoints how the media, such as the video games, affects even what some families consider a “big deal” at home; dinner time and eating with the family. When I finally got my Nintendo 64, my world as I knew it changed as well. Important things my mother used to stress on us were no longer her worries. The T.V. and video games became her source of “relaxation” away from me and my sisters.

When you think of the lack of parents’ involvement in the everyday lives of their children, and vise versa, you can also not only establish the physical aspects of the word absence, but the mental and social aspects of it as well. As media became more and more of a must have and changes within present day media (during my childhood) began to venture away from what my mother would consider “her days”, the idea of parent-children togetherness began to leave the minds as well, because now parents could no longer socially or mentally relate to the things their kids were being introduced to. I was a big music fan, so I loved it when I was finally able to watch music videos at home. The feeling was incredible. It was as if I went from singing The Jackson Five’s hit, to doing my own little rendition of the latest So For Real video “Candy Rain” in a matter of minutes. My mother could never understand how and why I liked the type of videos or music that I did, so she would never try to listen to me when I told her how much a song meant to me just because she felt as if the big change in time, in reference to the music being produced, almost forced us to separate. She would say things such as, “This is not my type of music”, or “You can’t listen to this kind of crap in my house.” I considered that unfair parenting, but I also knew not to make that known in my house. I also remember times where she would just give in and try to allow herself to understand us by listening to the new things and watching the new shows media offered her children, which did not last too long either. We do not even think about talking to her while her soap operas or what she called “stories” were on. That was grounds for a big argument, and there was nothing you could do to change that.

My childhood as it relates to the media was often difficult, because mom wanted to bond at times, and we wanted to bond at times, but things like our TV shows and our music choices- while mom was caught up in her “back-in-the-day” media- just would not allow us to. Conversations at these times mainly consisted of my mother calling our programs corny, and my siblings and I arguing about how our shows were not corny and that she should try to watch them with us. But our mother usually interjected with a simple “It goes both ways.”

If it is safe to say, the change of media in someway, shape or form, demolished the relationship between my mother and her children.

Edited by: Victoria Greco
Work Cited

Livingstone, Sonia. (2002). //Young People and New Media//. Great Britain. Sage Publications.