My daughter was 3 years old when I first realized that raising a Gen Alpha child was going to require a different kind of parenting. I had decided to introduce her to Tom and Jerry. In my mind, this was a rite of passage.
I was sharing a piece of my childhood with her—the cartoons I grew up watching, without giving a second thought to a cat chasing a mouse around the house with frying pans, hammers and whatever other weapon happened to be within reach. Then she looked at me with genuine concern and asked, “Nana let you watch this?” The judgment was immediate. Nana, for the record, is my mother.
She lives with us now, so my daughter has direct access to the woman responsible for many of the parenting decisions of my childhood. I laughed at her reaction, but I also remember thinking: Oh, this is going to be different. She was 3, and already she wasn’t willing to accept something simply because I had accepted it as a child.
That was the first time I realized I'd have to parent differently. I am a Gen X mom, born and raised in Louisiana in a Catholic home. You did not question those adults.
Sometimes the answer was, “Because I said so.” Sometimes there wasn’t an answer. We just weren’t always encouraged to spend a lot of time discussing them. Someone told you to stop crying.
You got yourself together. I don’t say that to criticize my mother. She raised us according to what she knew, what her generation expected and what she believed would prepare us for the world.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
