Raising Children in a World That Doesn’t Wait

A Weekend, a Beach, and a Realisation

A few weekends ago, we decided to do something very simple.

No big plans. No long-distance travel. Just a short drive along ECR, a quiet Airbnb near the beach, and a promise to ourselves that we would do absolutely nothing important.

The place was calm. The sea was right there. The children were happy.

And somewhere between slow walks on the sand and long silences on the balcony, it struck me how little it actually takes to disconnect. You don’t really need to fly to some exotic country to feel rested. A few kilometres, a change of rhythm, and a little space from routine can do the job just fine. After all, the sea is the same everywhere. Only our minds keep changing locations.

That evening, as the sun was going down, my children were sitting near me — one scrolling through something, the other talking about a game idea that didn’t even exist yet. At some point, out of habit, I asked a very innocent question. The kind of question most parents ask without thinking much.

“What were you bored of today?”

The answer came instantly. Not emotional. Not dramatic. Just factual.

“Nothing really. We were just switching.”

Switching.

Not bored. Not restless. Just switching.

That word stayed with me longer than the waves did.

At their age, boredom meant something else entirely to me. It meant waiting. It meant lack of options. It meant sitting with nothing to do. For them, boredom didn’t exist the same way. Attention moved. Interest shifted. And that was normal.

In that moment, something became very clear.

My children are not a delayed version of me.

Their childhood is not an upgraded or downgraded copy of mine.

It is a completely different version altogether.

And suddenly, comparing my childhood with theirs felt meaningless. Almost illogical. Like comparing two operating systems built for different hardware.

That was the moment I realised why this comparison — something parents, teachers, colleagues, and society constantly do — is fundamentally broken. And why understanding today’s children needs a very different starting point.

This blog begins there.

A Very Short Detour Through History (I Promise, No Big Bang)

Let me make one thing clear before we proceed. I’m not going to start from the Big Bang, the Stone Age, or from the time humans were chasing animals with sticks. That’s not the plan. We only need to rewind a few hundred years to understand what’s happening today.

For most of human history, life was slow. Painfully slow. Work was physical. Learning was limited. Information travelled at the speed of a walking human or a horse having a good day. Survival mattered more than expression. Patience wasn’t a virtue back then — it was a necessity. If you didn’t have patience, nature trained you. Harshly.

Then came the pre-industrial phase, where skills were passed down, work was repetitive, and effort directly decided survival. People didn’t “explore interests.” They explored how to eat tomorrow. Identity came from occupation. A farmer’s child usually became a farmer. Not because of passion, but because of probability.

The industrial revolution quietly changed the human psyche. Machines arrived. Work moved from fields to factories. Time became structured. Hours mattered. Productivity was measured. Suddenly, effort wasn’t only physical — it became mechanical and mental. Education started getting organised. Discipline became more important than creativity. This is also when obedience started being rewarded more than curiosity. Good workers followed instructions. Great workers didn’t ask too many questions.

Fast forward a bit, and we entered the digital age. Information exploded. Learning shifted from “who you know” to “what you can access.” Survival slowly moved away from muscle and towards mind. Patience still mattered, but in a different way. Waiting in line was replaced by waiting for results. Effort became less visible but more cognitive. Thinking replaced lifting. Sitting replaced sweating. And boredom… boredom quietly entered human life for the first time in history.

Here’s the important part.

Every time tools changed, humans changed with them.

Workers changed.

Learning changed.

Attention changed.

Even the idea of what a “good life” looks like changed.

There’s a lovely line often attributed to historians and behavioural researchers alike: humans don’t shape tools for long — tools shape humans much faster. And children don’t even get the luxury of adapting slowly. They are born directly into the environment their parents are still trying to understand.

Which brings us to the most inconvenient truth of all.

Children don’t need to change according to the world.

They are born already aligned with it.

What looks like impatience today would have been inefficiency yesterday. What looks like distraction now would have been curiosity earlier. The environment changed first. Humans followed. Children simply arrived after the change had already happened.

And this has always been the case. Every generation before us felt the next one was “different.” They were right. They just didn’t realise it was supposed to be that way.

This understanding is important. Because without it, every conversation about children starts with judgment. With it, the conversation can finally move towards clarity.

The Last Ten Years – When Everything Suddenly Hit Fast-Forward

Before we even talk about the last ten years, we need to give credit where it’s due — the Internet. The Internet quietly changed the world much before smartphones became extensions of our palms. It changed how information moved, how people learned, and how authority slowly shifted from “the person who knows” to “the person who can search.”

Now comes the slightly awkward part.

My generation sits right in the middle of all this. We are parents and children at the same time. Our parents still prefer asking people for answers, while our children don’t understand why anyone would ask a person when Google exists. We are the generation that first learned to “check with someone” and later learned to “just Google it.” Even now, we keep switching between the two, depending on mood, urgency, and battery percentage.

There’s another funny side to this. Our parents never really knew what we were studying. They trusted the syllabus, the school, and maybe the textbook cover. Today, we don’t just know what our children are studying — we end up studying it with them. Not out of curiosity, but out of survival.

Our children skim, jump, and move ahead, while we dutifully read chapters, explanations, examples, and sometimes even YouTube comments, just to help them make sense of it all. Somewhere along the way, we became accidental students again.

Then came the last ten years. And things stopped evolving slowly.

Smartphones became affordable. Internet became constant. Content became endless. Gaming became immersive. Answers became instant. Attention became expensive. Curiosity found shortcuts. And confidence… confidence quietly grew.

Today’s children grow up in a world where answers are always available. Not tomorrow. Not after effort. Right now. When information is always at your fingertips, your relationship with learning changes. You don’t memorise first. You explore first. You don’t wait to be taught. You test, click, skip, return, and move on.

This often gets misunderstood.

Many adults interpret this as arrogance. As impatience. As lack of respect for effort. But this isn’t attitude. This is conditioning. When the environment gives answers quickly, the mind adapts to expect clarity quickly. When curiosity gets rewarded instantly, searching feels natural. There’s no rebellion here. Just alignment.

Researchers have been pointing this out for years. Cognitive studies around digital natives show that children growing up with constant access to information develop faster pattern recognition and quicker decision-making instincts, while their depth-building happens differently. Books like The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and Range by David Epstein touch upon how exposure shapes thinking styles — not better or worse, just different. Even educational research shows that modern learners prefer exploration before explanation. They want context first, structure later.

Earlier generations searched for answers.

This generation expects them.

That expectation didn’t come from ego. It came from the world they were born into.

When effort moves from physical to cognitive, behaviour shifts. When information is abundant, the skill changes from remembering to filtering. When answers are easy to get, the real challenge becomes asking the right question. Children aren’t avoiding hard work. The definition of hard work itself is changing.

And this is where many adults struggle. We are still evaluating children using an old scale, in a new environment. Naturally, the numbers don’t make sense.

Once we understand this, a lot of frustration melts away. What remains is curiosity. And that’s a much better place to continue this conversation from.

The Clash – Parents, Teachers, Colleagues, Bosses… and the Comfort of Comparison

The comparison trap is everywhere. Homes, classrooms, offices, staff rooms, meeting rooms, even tea breaks. It quietly slips into conversations without invitation.

“When we were your age, we used to do this.”

“At your stage, we were already handling that.”

“In our time, we didn’t need all this.”

The sentences change slightly. The feeling doesn’t.

Parents say it to children. Teachers say it to students. Seniors say it to juniors. Bosses say it to new hires. Sometimes, the same person says it in the morning to their child and in the afternoon to their colleague. It’s a very versatile sentence.

There’s a reason this comparison feels so comforting. It reassures the older generation. It creates a quiet sense of achievement. It says, “I survived tougher conditions,” “I managed with fewer tools,” “I figured things out without shortcuts.” It feels good. It feels earned. And to be fair, it often is.

Expectations don’t float in isolation. They belong to time, tools, pressure, and context. A child growing up today isn’t just younger — they are growing inside a completely different operating environment. The same goes for a student, a fresher, or a new employee. When environments shift rapidly, behaviour shifts with them. Comparing outcomes without accounting for inputs becomes an unfair game.

Psychology has been pointing this out for a long time. Developmental researchers have consistently shown that behaviour is shaped far more by environment than by intent. Sociologists studying generational cohorts note that every generation develops its own coping mechanisms based on the dominant pressures of its time. Even workplace research highlights that motivation, loyalty, and effort look different when career paths, job security, and learning tools change.

Yet, the comparison continues.

A teacher wonders why attention looks different today.

A manager wonders why loyalty feels different now.

A parent wonders why childhood feels unfamiliar.

The answer is simpler than we think. The scale has changed.

Effort earlier looked visible.

Effort now looks mental.

Learning earlier was linear.

Learning now jumps around before settling.

Authority earlier came from position.

Authority now comes from access to information.

None of this makes one generation superior. It makes them situationally different.

Trying to measure both on the same ruler creates confusion. It also creates unnecessary friction. What gets labelled as lack of discipline is often adaptation. What gets labelled as entitlement is often exposure. What gets labelled as impatience is often speed trained by environment.

The funny part is this. Every older generation has said this about the next one. Every single time. History is full of complaints about “today’s youth.” And yet, the world kept moving forward. Somehow, it always did.

Once we recognise this, the clash softens. Conversations change. Curiosity replaces correction. Observation replaces judgment. And suddenly, dealing with children, students, or younger colleagues feels less exhausting.

Because the goal was never to prove who had it harder.

The goal was always to understand who is growing up where.

What Lies Ahead – Why Children Have to Be Different

If we are being honest, nobody really knows what the future looks like. We can make educated guesses, draw neat charts, and throw around big words like automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. But the truth is, the future is arriving faster than our ability to fully understand it.

Work is changing quietly and constantly. Machines are taking over repetitive tasks. Software is handling decisions that once needed teams. Automation is entering places we never expected. And AI is no longer a “someday” concept — it’s already sitting on our phones, laptops, and desks. The world our children are preparing for hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.

Which makes this interesting.

When children are studying today, they aren’t preparing for the world we grew up in. They are preparing for a world that even adults haven’t figured out. It’s like revising for an exam where the syllabus is still being written.

Pop culture gives us some amusing hints. Movies like Toy Story or those exaggerated future worlds where humans are permanently seated, eating and scrolling, make us laugh. But underneath the humour sits a quiet truth. As systems handle more work, human effort shifts. Physical effort reduces. Mental effort changes. Comfort increases. And whenever comfort increases, mindset adjusts automatically.

This has always happened.

When effort reduces, expectations rise.

When tools improve, outcomes get redefined.

Take a simple example. An engineer today and an engineer ten years ago might carry the same job title. On paper, nothing has changed. In reality, everything has. Today’s engineer is expected to deliver faster, think broader, learn continuously, and adapt instantly. Tools do a lot of the heavy lifting, but the bar has moved higher. Productivity is assumed. Learning speed matters. The role didn’t get easier — it just got different.

Children see this world forming around them.

They see speed rewarded.

They see adaptability praised.

They see tools evolving every year.

Naturally, their minds tune themselves to this environment. Curiosity becomes broader. Attention moves faster. Comfort with change increases. This isn’t softness. It’s calibration.

One simple truth needs to be said clearly here.

Children are not preparing for our future.

They are preparing for theirs.

And their future demands different strengths. The ability to unlearn. The ability to switch contexts. The ability to work with tools rather than fight them. The ability to ask better questions instead of memorising fixed answers.

When we look at them through this lens, many of their behaviours stop feeling strange. They start feeling appropriate. Even necessary.

The future won’t reward those who hold on tightly to how things used to be. It will reward those who adjust quickly to how things become. Children seem to understand this instinctively.

We are still catching up.

Conclusion – Evolution Never Asked for Permission

Evolution has never waited for approval. It never checked if people were comfortable. It never paused to explain itself. It simply moved forward. Humans adjusted. Every single time.

Change, especially in children, often gets mistaken for rebellion. But most of the time, it’s nothing more than alignment. Alignment with tools, speed, access, and a world that keeps rewriting its own rules. Children don’t wake up planning to be different. They just grow up where difference is the default.

Comparing generations sounds logical on the surface, but it falls apart quickly. It’s like comparing two different lives and wondering why the journeys don’t match. Different starting points. Different maps. Different weather. Even effort means different things at different times. What required patience once may now require adaptability. What demanded endurance earlier may now demand agility.

Psychologists and sociologists have quietly repeated this for decades. Human behaviour shifts with environment. Identity forms around context. Even thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari have pointed out that the biggest skill of the future isn’t knowledge, but the ability to constantly update oneself. That applies to adults as much as it applies to children.

There’s a small irony here. Every generation believes it understands struggle better than the next. And yet, every generation also benefits from the struggles of the one before it. Progress works like that. Nobody gets the full picture while standing inside it.

So maybe the way forward isn’t correction.

Maybe it’s observation.

Observe more.

Label less.

Adapt faster.

Children don’t need us to constantly fix them. They need us to understand the world they are growing into. Once that understanding settles in, conversations change. Frustration reduces. Expectations soften. And relationships improve — quietly, without effort.

Evolution will continue doing its thing.

Children will continue becoming what their time demands.

Our role is simpler than we think.

Stay curious. Stay flexible. And try not to measure tomorrow using yesterday’s ruler.

That usually ends better.