Experience is a funny thing. When we don’t have it, we don’t always know it. We are in a state of “blissful ignorance.” What is blissful about ignorance you ask? Well mainly that we can go around judging things with a feeling of superiority and mastery.
Let’s consider a concrete example…
Ever stroll through the aisles of the supermarket, quietly contemplating dinner plans and peacefully reading labels only to be violently yanked out of your reverie by a screaming child? You know what I am talking about: the epic supermarket toddler meltdown. Oh yes, they cry they scream, either they want out, they want in. For goodness sake, what do they want?
I admit it, I judged the parents of those children. But now that I am a mother, I too have been the mother of a screaming toddler. Sometimes I reflect on how my perspective has changed and I feel guilty about my un-empathetic superior thoughts I had about those parents.
This lesson features a funny video about how non-parents see parents. I like the video because it is repetitive enough that students may be able to get the humour. As you may know, understanding humour in a foreign language is rather challenging, so any time I find something that can make people laugh, I like to use it.
But I feel the discussion lies beyond the video. I think it’s about how experience changes us. And how sometimes that very experience can have us looking as crazy as the people on the video.
Rather than have a pre-discussion as a warm up, I would use the video to get prime the participants’ thoughts.
The Video: What Parenting Sounds Like to Non-Parents
Discussion
- Can you think of a ‘before and after’ situation where experience made you change your perspective?
- What events in your life (e.g. becoming a parent, changing jobs, moving to a foreign country) have changed the way you think about things?
- Can you remember a scene in your life that made you look as crazy and the people in the video?
- If you were going to make a video like this one, what would the topic be?