I felt compelled to write this, and I know this subject MUST have been raised on here many times, however..
Last week DH and I went to the coast , it turned out to be unusually hot and so most people were on the beach.
We had a walk on the sand and had a sit on a wall, just along the wall was a Mother and her little boy who must have been about three years old. He was a lovely little lad, and he was just using his imagination to dig in the sand and 'Build' spaceships etc, he would run to his Mum and tell her about what he had made. She never looked up, just said 'Yeah' as she was attached to her mobile phone. Again and again he shouted to her to no avail and at one stage he went up to her and physically moved her face with his little hands to make her see what he was saying, she just pushed him off and went back to staring at the screen. His little face was horribly sunburnt.
I have to confess that I wanted to slap her, but I also wanted to explain that time is fleetingly short, no amount of facebook or rubbish will ever compare to that time when your children are small and innocent, that time you can never get back. I think perhaps knowledge comes with age, but I couldn't bear it if I was looking back and thought I had ignored my child in that way.
I don't know what the solution is, but even DH who never comments on anything like that said he thought it was heartbreaking.
