The Alpha Gen

They are here to invade the world.

The babies of the X and Y generation.

 The babies of the baby boomers of the 50s and 60s watched the box for learning and entertainment,. I remember putting my girls to watch Sesame Street and the like to take time off for a while and at the same time hoping they would learn through songs and games. So mother and daughters would get all excited when we sang the Sesame songs and even more when daddy bought home sesame dolls.
In the evenings before bedtime, the kiasu mother would be playing intelligent toys and games so as to pump in as much knowledge as possible. Then of course the mother would act out when she sang nursery rhymes to instll all possible kinesthetic skills. One, two, three, four , five, once i caught a fish alive, ... bonding time.
That was already ahead of mothers of the Veteran era and we thought we had done a pretty good job.

The Alpha babies are different. They are from parents of the X and Y generations who have conquered the cyber world. Oh dear the television is obsolete. Now things are happening only in the cyber arena. They are now exposed to the savvy cyber space. I watch in awe as my grand nephew and niece handle the ipad and ipod.

This is what they indulge in when they open their eyes or whenever they want to be entertained.They press all buttons and icons to get their target. Very soon, as they go to play school they will also meet them in the cyber world for communication times. While I only learn to be less scared of the cyber world in recent times, the Alpha babies seem to be out to conquer the cyber world.
I learn the computer and the like out of necessity for work and more recently to be in contact with family and friends. It's either people of my generation learn or we would be dinosaurs. Very soon we will become obsolete as we will not be able to handle them in the cyber world. Their needs and demands will be so different. Teachers in school must now be more equipped and talk the cyber language to sustain learning and interest in the classroom.
Aother pertinent question will be: why do Alpha babies need to go to school if they can gather knowledge on the internet? Home schooling can be easily conducted with easily available cyber information.
My opinion is you cannot live alone in this world. Even the greatest knowledge acquired cannot be replaced by the human factor; the need to socialise, talk face to face, touch and be encouraged by the physical voice and not "the unheard voice" over the cyber world.

Let's hope the Alpha babies will not turn out to be robots and lack the human skills to care and love others around them. I noticed in church last week a baby girl of 2 suffering from shortsightedness (600 degrees) and I was told that she is already so savvy with the ipad; could it be the effect of the ipad? Grandpa shared that teachers of the baby boomers era will not be able to entertain them anymore in Sunday School... they already too clever.

The Alpha Babies need a different set of syllabus in school.