Poor Emmy. She’s got a pretty tough case of FOMO—Fear of Missing Out.
Last month, Emmy’s daddy took big sister Jane to a Daddy-Daughter dance. Jane had a new dress, and there was ice cream after. Alas, Emmy was too young. She could only gaze tearfully at Jane as she left, her mind full of the wonder of all she was missing. She had a bad case of FOMO that evening.
Anyone who’s grown up with older siblings has suffered the same indignity. We younger ones longingly watched siblings go to school. We waited in the bleachers at baseball practice when we were too little to sign up.
I vividly recall aching to take piano lessons while my big brother Dave loathed them. I imagined he was becoming a piano prodigy and just knew I couldn’t possibly catch up. I had FOMO in a big way. I’ll never forget my joy on that long ago Saturday morning when my parents allowed me to go in his place, proudly carrying the Beginner book he had used the year before.
Young children are gifted with super-sized curiosity, eager to move ahead as quickly as possible. They know with certainty that the world holds much they haven’t seen yet. Young children live every day with a Fear of Missing Out.
But increasingly, adults are also noted as having the “FOMO Syndrome.” Continually checking social media updates, needing to attend every meeting at work, incessantly reconsidering career choices—all have been identified as adult experiences of FOMO, causing folks to feel continually frustrated and dissatisfied with their lives.
In fact, FOMO has become so widely observed that the word “FOMO” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.
FOMO may be a “syndrome” for adults, but for young children, it’s the natural state of being. FOMO drives kids to learn, grow, and achieve. It provides necessary energy to propel them into the futures they seek.
FOMO causes toddlers to fight bed time, and gets ten-year-olds out of bed too early on Christmas morning. But for Emmy and other last-born children, FOMO is also a source of frustration. It’s a good thing for them that the years fly by, piling those yearned-for experiences one upon another as a simple matter of time.
