Magnolia Ripkin, the Mama Bear(aka Editor in Chief) over at BLUNTmoms always has something fabulous to say.  That’s why when the opportunity to have her guest post arose, I jumped on it!  Thanks for your wise words Magnolia, and happy reading my friends.

I am Canadian, so are my kids and husband.  I am also linked back to Europe through my family of origin. Having that connection to a really old part of the world means that I tend to view my fellow “New World” residents in two categories:

1.       The people who think Europe is a museum of some sort, and spend their time in Tim Horton’s coffee and doughnut drive through lanes.

2.       The people who live with one foot in their new country, and one in their society of origin.

I count our family as group 2.  We are drawn to the old world, but it is more than that. We try to use that connection to travel, and to teach our kids the difference between the old and the new in culture, architecture, literature, society and above all food!

North American kids live in a relatively fresh new society. My German relatives have furniture older than our capital city over here. Most of us new landers have no concept of a deep culture rooted in vast swaths of time that run into the far past. Everything over here is pretty much under 300 years old. Not so in places in Europe and the UK.

It was an incredible conversation with my young son when we last visited the old country. We stayed in a castle aged over 400 years, and he slept in a bed that was carved in the Renaissance period. It took some picture books and a world timeline to explain. Then we had to say “you how long it feels between Christmases? 300 times that time”. Then he got it.

A friend got married in a church in Northern Ireland that was over 250 years old. We took the kids and spent some time poking through the cemetery nearby. We challenged them to find the oldest marker, and the results were spellbinding. People died really young back then, and lost many children. The world we live in has longevity and free first world medical care. My little ones had no concept, for which I am grateful. They were further blown away when the bride pictures were being taken in the ruins of an abbey that was built in the year 1000. I can’t even get my head around that.

Not to be too philosophical, but really, if we teach kids the timeline of human culture, and where they fit into it, the advantage is theirs. If they understand viscerally that they are a cog in a very large wheel, they can be free of existential crisis because they are part of such a big picture, and they can understand they have responsibilities to it. If they know that their generation has gifts from the previous one, maybe we can teach them to take care of the world for the next one.

In the meantime we will continue to install a world view in these little creatures and make sure they know how good their life is in this era and this land.

Magnolia Ripkin is sort of like your mouthy Aunt who drinks too much and tells you how to run your life, except funny… well mostly funny… like a cold glass of water in the face. Channeling Erma Bombeck and Dear Abby on her blog, she is flinging out advice, answering pressing questions about business, personal development, parenting, heck even the bedroom isn’t safe. New to the scene, she would love to answer your reader questions. Other places to find her: Editor in Chief at BluntMoms, contributor at Huffington Post and check her out in the amazing compendium of hot bloggers who are published in I Just Want to Be Alone (I Just Want to Pee Alone) from www.amazon.com