Brian Cullinan, one of the two PriceWaterhouseCoopers partners who handled the Oscar envelopes on Sunday night, was tweeting photos from backstage minutes before he handed Warren Beatty the wrong Best Picture envelope.

Multitasking caused this error. Multitasking simply doesn’t work; it just isn’t possible to do two things at once.

The most incredible part was when the accountant jumps up and says, ‘He (presenter Warren Beatty) took the wrong envelope!’ and goes running onstage.”

He took the wrong envelope? Nope. You gave him the wrong envelope.

Now, imagine all the times children need their parents attention. Parents are so often on their phones, children feel less important than the Snapchat stories parents are creating, text messages they are sending, or Facebook posts. It has become such an epidemic that a nursery school post asking parents to pay attention to their kids went viral.

What the incident at the Academy Awards demonstrated was that sometimes the effect of our inability to multitask is immediate.

What we won’t know for some time is the impact multitasking has on our children. If Cat Stevens’s lyrics hold true as written in Cat’s in the Cradle, then I’m gonna’ be like you dad, you know I’m gonna’ be like you.

Finally, how do we define irony? While mentally composing this blog post, I got on the wrong train.

Tina Nocera, Founder

Parental Wisdom®

“I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of.

Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.” – Louis CK

Is it really possible these days to be bored?

I remember learning at a very early age never to say that I was bored.  When I said that, all sorts of menial labor projects came out of nowhere.  Fortunately, I got wise and was no longer required to dust the bottom legs of the dining room chairs or shine my father’s shoes.

Today we really don’t get bored. We simply pickup an electronic device and get ‘busy’ which I suppose is the opposite of bored.  But is being busy all the time a good thing?

Raising kids in our always connected world is a challenge because being bored is actually a good thing.  It gives a child time to think, day dream, create something new, something novel, something that is their own, and more importantly, time to interact with family and friends. 

Please comment below and share some ‘unplugged’ ideas for kids.  That is, if you are lucky enough to hear your children say, “I’m bored.”  I for one would love a little boredom!

Have a great week.

 Tina Nocera, Founder

Parental Wisdom®