Digital natives & budgies

Digital natives & budgies

A few weeks ago my 11 year old daughters’ hamster, imaginatively named Hammy, died peacefully in the night and it was as you can imagine a very sad day. Now children as we all know bounce back remarkably quickly and in no time at all I found myself under pressure to replace the rodent; not something I had intended to do. So we discussed it, she negotiated with me (a skill she has inherited that I have to take responsibility for) and I lost!

Never one to be totally beaten I did broker a compromise…no more rat like creatures! After a little discussion we parted company to contemplate the possibility of a Budgie.

10 minutes later I received an email and it went like this…...

‘Mummy, I have been thinking about my new Budgie and I decided to look him up on Google. I have put a link in this email for you to read so you understand Budgies. I’ve sent you some stuff on how to look after him and I have also found the cage he wants, it is the biggest one so he can fly around a lot which is important! I have looked up colours as well and I want a blue one like the picture (she had attached an image for me), or a violet one and he has to be a boy, girls bite, and boys talk more!!’


Bobby, the digital native's budgieBobby, our new blue male Budgie, is very happy in his super large cage just in case you were wondering, and I feel thoroughly educated! And my oh so talented little Digital Native daughter has been told that Santa doesn’t know what Google is and won't be accepting links! (I think I’m also being "played" on the Santa front as well but that’s a story for another day).

Digital Natives is a term we came across recently for anyone born after 1997 who will never have experienced life B.G. (before Google) or before the web or DVDs and Sky…you get the idea.  The term seems to accurately describe all those children who seem to intuitively know how to programme the Sky+ box the first time they lay eyes on it without the use of a manual.

The teenage years are rapidly approaching, wish me luck!