Real World vs. First World Problems

At the gallery yesterday, I was speaking with a friend who was on her way to volunteer at a free clinic. She and I do not share political views, but we do share an understanding of what she calls the modern American "do whatever you want" parenting style is netting us in social consciousness. Now more than ever, some of us are giving more than our share to charities, our families, and society while others complain that there is never enough money, stuff, time, etc. for "me", the emerging people-eater of greed that has nothing to do with socioeconomic status.

For example, we discussed the necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacteria, that is plaguing our local youth, a little-known problem that has prompted one pharmacy to give away free antibiotics. "Is it poverty, education--?" I asked my friend. "Probably lazy parenting," she shrugged. She is echoing what I heard from our pharmacist and our nurse practitioner who examined my son after a physical injury that included a nasty cut on his foot (resulting from a teenage pool party fail that predictably followed "hold my root beer"). The PA warned my son about keeping the cut clean and taking preventative measures to avoid the flesh-eating bacteria their office keeps identifying and treating for after minor cuts turn rogue. My son had one reply, “You sound just like my mom.”

So I wonder if our parenting, which is now blamed for flesh-eating bacteria, is another casualty of a culture of First World Problems. "My parents came straight home from work, changed for a party... Guess it's the Dominoes app & my Green Dot card for dinner again!" What may hide in this origami of internet memes is a quiet truth: teenagers who are continuously talking to their friends via recently-upgraded computers and smart phones may be exchanging only an occasional text with their parents. When do such parents engage in a meaningful conversation with their kids?

My son is 17 and doesn't drive yet. We had a terrible car accident over three years ago, and he's taking Driver's Ed to feel the confidence that has eluded him after staring down death across the dashboard of a Benz. As a result, we take him to school, pick him up after school, and he does his homework, indie game designing and the requisite gaming from my gallery office every day. This arrangement has permitted us a lot of interaction. Turns out he's quite a salesperson when I step out to an appointment, and it's nice to have his IT expertise in-house. But mostly, it's just nice to have him with us, along with our gallery Corgi pup. On Saturdays, his friends stop by the gallery to pick him up for parties and mall rat missions, and he occasionally tutors a girl from his school whose parents own the restaurant a couple of spaces away.

So he gets to take part in real life with his family every day. And he gets parented by me personally every day. We even share Internet memes as a family. First World Problems are always good for *lolz*. My kid knows the difference between a problem, such as trending flesh-eating bacteria in an affluent Florida resort, and a First World Problem, such as "my mom is sick of me losing my cell phone and has replaced my (broken) smart phone with a disposable, pay-as-you-go phone." Or real pain, such as a long-distance relationship in which a couple talks more on Skype than in person" and First World Pain, such as "my mom says I have to wait a whole week for the money to buy that extra RAM I want to order from Newegg to soup up gaming on the custom computer I'm building."

I can testify that sometimes it takes being a parent to learn to recognize the difference. And perspective. Just as entrepreneurs must delay gratification to build a business that will provide us with a payday, so society must pay it forward to our kids to provide them with a future. We have to train them how to bathe properly, wear clean socks (to avoid Zombie Apocalypse-grade rotting flesh), and look for signs of others they encounter not being able to afford soap or socks. We have to teach them to share out of a grateful heart.

For me, the best way to accomplish this might be through spending time with my son and identifying teachable moments when living by example produces conversations about why we volunteer with a literacy program and donate gallery goods to silent auctions. It may be allowing him to experience delayed gratification through making him part of the family budget, instead of sacrificing our financial reserves every time he begs for an iPad or Xbox upgrade.

Parenting may require learning an emerging language, in my case programming (yeah, right!) and purchasing TV shows from Amazon instant digital that we can watch and geek out over as a family (i.e.:  Fringe, Firefly, Revolution). Parenting in our family includes using the Panini maker as a lesson in self-sufficiency (my son has asked for his own to take to college--it's the new, first world version of the hot plate).

Am I gloating about my good parenting? Hardly! I did a decade of it as a single mom and live with constant regrets. But we do listening to feelings and second chances in our family. Real world problems exist, just usually not between my son and me. And when they come, we know how to solve them with compassion.

That's what's missing in this First World where running out of battery juice and having the wrong phone charger can be allowed to ruin our whole day and keep the focus on ourselves. We need compassion, we need to discipline ourselves to look up from texting our kids and be still with them so that they have their needs for belonging met at home. So that we notice, or they show us, when cuts aren't healing right or real emotional wounds are causing them real pain. So that we can teach compassion by example. Every day.