I do not want to trade places with my kids. Not because they have a weird Father that tries to remain young and has more grey hair on his head than ideas what to cook for his kids for lunch at 3pm.

No, Kids nowadays have it way harder than I had. Sure, we had to work more, walk more and had to wait for that telephone dial to turn back to dial the next number...

These damn zeros and nines!!!

They will have to fight a war. Not a literal war, but an inner one. You can think of a Steven Pressfield Art of war War with a Burger eating David Hasselhoff kind of twist.

Think about it: Our Kids have a drug machine in their hands. And everywhere they are going is pleasure. Within reach and with no effort available.

With just a push of a button, they can get a dopamine boost and become addicted to this feeling very quickly and easily.

In our childhood, addictions were associated to grown up drugs like cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. Which were inherently hard to come by for a boy at the age of 11 who spent all of his 32 cents on pink candy called cheese talers (these baby drugs were 2cents each, which I had to either wait or work for).

But today, a smartphone, for example, is a digital drug machine that out Kids have access to as early as age 10 (at our home). This constant stream pre-wires the brain for this behavior and can and probably will lead to problems later in life.

And things will be more difficult. Right now we have a clunky interface that is a a blinking rectangle in our hand. Zoom. This will be much more immersive and real through AR and VR.

The solution is simple, but hard to do.

The Challenge will be, simply put, to avoid that. To not get Addicted, not get a skewed ideal on life or beauty because everyone is doing so much better. Not to get buried into the easy and comfortable coffin of feeling wonderful, through cheap dopamine boosts, just to have your Psyche and body very slowly rot away until is is way harder to get out of that death trap.

I got carried away a little here, but the challenges are there for our kids. Not to speak from the things that are going to change

This will be a very tricky problem to solve for our kids. Especially now when we are in a kind of a transition phase. Once shit has hit the fan, there will be solutions and products out there to address all of this, and life will be easier. But we are not there yet. Unfortunately.

For now and even then, the skill that will make the most difference is self awareness.

When your kid realizes early enough what is happening to him or her, it has the best chance to address it. The earlier it happens the easier it will be for that little rascal.

Sometimes, it is the Job of Someone else to point that out, but how likely is it that a teenager listens to someone else?

If you can teach your kid how to be self-aware. Along with all the technical aspects of what it does, and what the challenge looks like.

Honestly, I have no fucking idea.

My usual strategies probably don't work, because they suck. There is a quote from a guy I really like.

Kinder kann man nicht erziehen, sie machen einen eh alles nach.
You can't educate children, they imitate you anyway.

Carl Valentin

Unfortunately for us parents, I found this to be true.

So I try this: I do the work and have them help me.

We have a ritual in our family, where we are sitting together in the evening, and just make a list of things that we liked that day. This is fairly consistent and right now I am integrating a new thing into this ritual.

Currently I am doing a dopamine fast. (I did beak it just today, though) and my kids are filling out questionnaires about my mood. The measured things are patience, general mood and "niceness". The good thing is that the original is pretty much the last thing we do, so the kids have the whole picture. If you escalates in our home, that usually does it in the evening.

This is a 30 day exercise and my hope is that my kids will remember this and maybe trade for themselves. And also, I plan on force these bastards to do this also. In a nice way of course.

If you liked reading or watching this, feel free to let me know. It is much appreciated. If you have any topics, let me know and if you have ideas how to do that please comment down below.

May the singularity be with you.

Gunnar (LazerDad)

I do not want to trade places with my kids. Not because they have a weird Father that tries to remain young and has more grey hair on his head than ideas what to cook for his kids for lunch at 3pm.

No, Kids nowadays have it way harder than I had. Sure, we had to work more, walk more and had to wait for that telephone dial to turn back to dial the next number...

These damn zeros and nines!!!

They will have to fight a war. Not a literal war, but an inner one. You can think of a Steven Pressfield Art of war War with a Burger eating David Hasselhoff kind of twist.

Think about it: Our Kids have a drug machine in their hands. And everywhere they are going is pleasure. Within reach and with no effort available.

With just a push of a button, they can get a dopamine boost and become addicted to this feeling very quickly and easily.

In our childhood, addictions were associated to grown up drugs like cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. Which were inherently hard to come by for a boy at the age of 11 who spent all of his 32 cents on pink candy called cheese talers (these baby drugs were 2cents each, which I had to either wait or work for).

But today, a smartphone, for example, is a digital drug machine that out Kids have access to as early as age 10 (at our home). This constant stream pre-wires the brain for this behavior and can and probably will lead to problems later in life.

And things will be more difficult. Right now we have a clunky interface that is a a blinking rectangle in our hand. Zoom. This will be much more immersive and real through AR and VR.

The solution is simple, but hard to do.

The Challenge will be, simply put, to avoid that. To not get Addicted, not get a skewed ideal on life or beauty because everyone is doing so much better. Not to get buried into the easy and comfortable coffin of feeling wonderful, through cheap dopamine boosts, just to have your Psyche and body very slowly rot away until is is way harder to get out of that death trap.

I got carried away a little here, but the challenges are there for our kids. Not to speak from the things that are going to change

This will be a very tricky problem to solve for our kids. Especially now when we are in a kind of a transition phase. Once shit has hit the fan, there will be solutions and products out there to address all of this, and life will be easier. But we are not there yet. Unfortunately.

For now and even then, the skill that will make the most difference is self awareness.

When your kid realizes early enough what is happening to him or her, it has the best chance to address it. The earlier it happens the easier it will be for that little rascal.

Sometimes, it is the Job of Someone else to point that out, but how likely is it that a teenager listens to someone else?

If you can teach your kid how to be self-aware. Along with all the technical aspects of what it does, and what the challenge looks like.

Honestly, I have no fucking idea.

My usual strategies probably don't work, because they suck. There is a quote from a guy I really like.

Kinder kann man nicht erziehen, sie machen einen eh alles nach.
You can't educate children, they imitate you anyway.

Carl Valentin

Unfortunately for us parents, I found this to be true.

So I try this: I do the work and have them help me.

We have a ritual in our family, where we are sitting together in the evening, and just make a list of things that we liked that day. This is fairly consistent and right now I am integrating a new thing into this ritual.

Currently I am doing a dopamine fast. (I did beak it just today, though) and my kids are filling out questionnaires about my mood. The measured things are patience, general mood and "niceness". The good thing is that the original is pretty much the last thing we do, so the kids have the whole picture. If you escalates in our home, that usually does it in the evening.

This is a 30 day exercise and my hope is that my kids will remember this and maybe trade for themselves. And also, I plan on force these bastards to do this also. In a nice way of course.

If you liked reading or watching this, feel free to let me know. It is much appreciated. If you have any topics, let me know and if you have ideas how to do that please comment down below.

May the singularity be with you.

Gunnar (LazerDad)