Kids won't jump from a moving car

Kids won't jump from a moving car, if for no other reason than self-preservation. That's why the car provides the perfect place and time for all sorts of things involving the kids. It's the perfect time to find out what's going on at school--who's going out with whom; what the wacky teachers have done most recently; etc. It's the perfect time for having "The Talk." There's no better time to find out what's bothering the kids or their opinions.

Valuable time. Time that ends too soon.

So, when I see kids in cars with their eyes glued to the DVD player, I want to shout, "Why are you wasting such valuable time???"

I don't have a problem with the car dvd players in general--we have a portable system that we use for long trips, but come on. Just wait until the kids (and their friends) start to drive. We learned when our older kids started how much we missed that time we were confined to the car.

So what prompted this rant? The kid who sat in his mom's car, watching a DVD on an afternoon when the weather was near perfect. An older sibling was at soccer practice, at a park with a cool playground. Yet another example of time wasted.

I'm just becoming an old fogey, and a preachy one at that, but kids grow up too fast to sacrifice time unnecessarily.