School days are busy times. They are good times to think about children having to wait for things. As their lives speed up, they learn to expect everything instantly. They expect to get what they want when they want it, to get answers quickly, to be able to do things instantly and to have comforts that their parents worked for decades to have.

I think Sesame Street started the ball rolling in this direction.  Fifty years ago, it started saturating children with flashing words and numbers and short scenes that didn’t require much of any attention span on the part of the child.  If you are a parent, you probably grew up with this type of media.  How good are you at waiting for things?

Your children are faced with the same type of conditioning, only more so because of today’s computer technology.  The speed of the computer leads all of us to be more impatient with waiting and to want everything instantly.  We have learned to measure all interactions in terms of seconds.  How fast can I get to a new screen, get the answer to my question, or make contact with another person.  “No waiting” is how we judge the value of a product or service.

Since we are on the topic of media, let me also say that the amount of advertising that surrounds our children also contributes to the no-waiting attitude.  The marketers propose a world where you keep buying new things, throwing away what’s old and responding immediately while supplies last.  Because new products are always right around the corner, there is no value to planning to own or waiting to own things.  In the future what you might be planning for will likely be obsolete.  “Now or never” is the message.

We must find a way to teach our children the virtues of planning and waiting. That is how they are most likely to reach their life goals. How much are you sharing with your kids about things you are planning and waiting for?

What good ideas do you have for how to teach this to your children?