The Road to 40 Day 136/365: Growing Boy

Vino is growing up to do his own thing, and I feel like I’m trying to catch up to make sure he grows up well.

It was a pretty routine Monday, so I didn’t really get to take pictures of what’s happening throughout the day. I took some videos of him during goalkeeper training, but that’s about it.

In Vino’s school, his year level is now utilizing tablets for their lessons. As such, the kids now has access to Facetime, which they regularly do now among themselves.

To some extent, I appreciate it, because at least he’s talking to someone his age while he’s playing. We recently likened it to playing outside when we were kids. Every generation has a version of kids being kids, and for this generation, it’s interacting through gadgets.

I can’t be mad at him being a kid. As a very hands-on dad, I may be a bit jealous that he talks more with his friends than with me. But I’m happy that he is getting his own circle of friends.

What I don’t appreciate is that he still shouts needlessly while he’s playing and talking to his friends. This, I feel, is a negative effect of YouTube on him.

It was a great learning aid when he was younger, but now, he’s gravitating towards noisy content creators who shout for no reason. As a result, he’s noisy for no good reason, exaggerating his reactions when he’s playing even if he’s alone.

While he was playing in the room, I could hear him shout a few times before I called him out. I said there’s nothing wrong with being excited, but he can be excited with a volume of 5 instead of a volume of 9.

I also told him that if he just keeps shouting when playing with his friends, then conversing with them is not helping his social skills. I wouldn’t want to stop him from talking to his friends, but I said if it’s not going to build his social skills, then maybe we can work on it through a different method.

I’m not sure if it’s too late to regulate habits, but I think he can still change or at least create new ones. I feel like I had habits at his age formed by spending a lot of time with my friends that evolved when I was put in a different environment.

We talked about purpose, that every action he does should have a purpose behind it. Saying “because I just like it” is not a good enough reason because it doesn’t consider how it will affect other people.

For example, he presses packaged fish when we’re in the supermarket at the risk of poking the plastic cover. When asked why he does it, he said he just likes to do it. I said his actions could lead to contamination of a fish, which could get someone sick or worse.

Sure, he’s still a kid, and maybe I’m expecting too much from him when I tell him these things. However, as long as he understands words, he will have a level of understanding of what I’m trying to tell him.

I won’t get tired of reminding him of the values I want to instill in him. I don’t really demand anything from him academically or whatnot, but I do want him to be a good person and a positive member of society.

I can’t control who he hangs out with in school, but if he has the right values, I think he would be able to naturally pick the right kind of friends to surround himself with.

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