Babysitting the other night has gotten my thinking about the things kids these days are into. The little boy we were babysitting had a friend over to spend the night, so they largely played with each other and stayed quite entertained without much intervention. Listening to them was quite interesting though. William is into a lot of the card games, video games etc. that are popular among his his age right now, however, he also enjoys a lot of what I would consider more "normal" things (well, normal in the sub-culture I was raised in ;) ) like reading, creating things, learning to knit, playing board games, playing with his kitten etc. In contrast, his little friend seemed to know little besides the "popular" games (I don't even know what half the stuff they were talking about was!); all he could talk about was the red-eyed dragon vs. the blue-eyed dragon, this one card's killing abilities etc. Lindsey and I also noticed a huge difference in the way the two boys responded to us, with William being MUCH more polite, respectful, obedient and pleasant to be around. (I'm not sure the other little boy had ever heard of using an "inside voice" ;))

What all this brought up in my mind though, was how I want to raise my kids some day. I don't want to raise them like they live on Little House in the Prairie, but I would like to raise them with more traditional values. While I think imagination is a wonderful thing that should be encouraged, I want to encourage it in the most wholesome way possible and some of the popular games for kids these days don't seem very wholesome to me. They're only six or seven, let them keep their innocence a little longer! However, I also want them to be able to relate to other kids they meet. Where do you draw the line on such issues? I'm so glad I'm not a parent right now and that these are decisions I'm currently facing! For right now I'm having fun observing and evaluating different parenting styles and value systems.