Gimmicks on Board

A Grandpa's Perspective

At the ripe old age of 43, I’m a Grandpa. My daughter and her husband just brought their first child into the world, a cute, squishy baby boy who I instantly fell in love with when I first laid eyes on his ultrasound photo.

I couldn’t wait to be a Grandpa. My wife, on the other hand, used to dread being called a Grandma. I think women fear aging more than men, despite men getting all the attention for midlife crisis’s. Thankfully, my wife has embraced her new title and will undoubtedly be the best grandma the world has ever known.

We went down to visit the new baby a couple weeks ago. My daughter and her husband, being first time parents, remind me a lot of first time outdoorsmen. They don’t have those tiny little fingernail cutters, they’ve got a little battery-powered nail file that looks like a Dremel. They’ve got a rocking chair that doesn’t rock. They set a timer to tell them when to feed the baby, even if that means waking the baby up to do it.

My wife and I fell for a gimmick or two and worried about stuff that never actually happened with our first child, too. When we had our second child, experience was our guide and we saved a lot of money and time no doing stuff that really didn’t offer any value.

First time (and even experienced) outdoorsmen are the same way. They buy a lot of gear they won’t actually use, and a lot of gear that doesn’t do what they think it will. A prime example of this phenomenon are the hiker boxes on the Appalachian Trail. Though in the case of hiker boxes, one man’s trash combination hammer/flashlight/axe/weather radio is another man’s treasure. Outdoorsmen are often victim to gimmicks and clever advertising telling us a gizmo solves a problem we didn’t know we had, but better be prepared for. Usually the best way to win over an inexperienced outdoorsman on the fence about a gimmicky gadget is to embed a compass in the handle, pay no mind to the fact that it always points SW.

Having raised our daughter, we know she has always preferred to learn things the hard way— through experience. We bit our tongues a lot on that first visit to see our grandson, tactfully offering advice when possible without going all passive-aggressive on her. The visit taught me a lot about the way Gen Z gets their info.

It’s gotta be a hard time to be a new parent. This generation has so much information, and misinformation available to them. From TikTok armchair experts on parenting, to large-language-model AI systems, to literally millions of websites telling them to do this that way or your baby will suffer some lifelong mental/physical illness.

I didn’t want to belittle the way they’re raising their child so I bit my tongue. They always say there is no manual for being a parent, but the grandpa in me says thats hogwash. There is a manual and it’s called, “Ask Your Family for Advice: You Aren’t the First Generation to Ever Have Children!”

A couple days ago, I was talking to my daughter on the phone while I drove to work. She mentioned something about some gadget not working as well as they were told it would and my tongue did a prison break from my teeth and reminded my daughter— a social media coordinator— that most of the people generating content online are doing so without much experience practicing their content, they just needed something to write about that day.

To my surprise, she agreed, while also bringing up one online tip they read about that was actually a good idea. She’s figuring this stuff out through experience, just like we all did, and as much as I want to help her, I couldn’t be prouder of her for her independence and for not being afraid to try and figure it out on her own.