A friend’s daughter won third place at a science exhibition last week. Smart kid, good result, proud parents, and one firm condition: nothing on social media.
Her parents are not the type to flood your feed. They post occasionally, the way most people my age do. A trip here, a family moment there. Something worth sharing with people who actually know them. So when their daughter won, the instinct was there. But the condition held.
I found this oddly moving.
Think about how we grew up. Our parents didn’t announce our achievements either, but that wasn’t a philosophy. There was no platform, no audience waiting, no little heart button to press. Pride lived in the house. Sometimes it didn’t even make it to dinner conversation. You could ask whether there were achievements worth announcing in my case, and I wouldn’t put up much of a fight on that front.
Then came our generation. We corrected hard. Every gold star, every participation ribbon, every school play where your child stood at the back and moved their mouth approximately near the words. Posted, tagged, captioned. We turned small victories into little public festivals. We were making up for something, I think. All those years of quiet houses.
And now this girl wins third prize at a science exhibition and says: keep it off the internet.
Not out of embarrassment. Not because she lost. Because she wanted it for herself.
Which is, if you think about it, exactly what our parents were doing.
Except our parents didn’t have a choice.
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