As someone who spends most of her day glued to an iPhone or an iPad, I bow to the insight that each one of our lives could be transformed by a personal computer. The way I see it, Jobs didn’t just re-shape the way computer technology is applied to our daily lives. Never mind his brilliant product design and marketing genius, Steve Jobs gave us each the gift of creative potential.
If you have young kids like mine who loves to play on an iPad and, even when reading a paper book, still intuitively uses her index finger to move pages, you know Jobs has some impact in your life and your kid’s life too. Here are a few bits of Jobs lore to help you teach your kids about a man whose legacy they are already living.
1. Creativity and Imagination
Beside Jobs' influence on computer, he has also transformed film, from the birth of computer animation and the plethora of screens from which our digital kids use to consume media. Watch Toy Story with your children this weekend and marvel at Pixar's early masterpiece.
2. Resilience and Recovery
By now everyone has heard or read his famous Stanford commencement speech in 2005. You can read the full printed version of the speech here. In his speech, Jobs compiles the many lessons of his own life into three stories – connecting the dots, love and loss, life and death.
Jobs' ability to regroup after being fired from the company he founded is a prime example of resilience and recovery. As much as parents hate to watch their kids experience failure, learning to bounce back from disappointment is a critical life skill. Jobs' single-minded pursuit of his passion reminds us how important it is to help children find their own passions...whether we understand them or not.
3. Life and Death
And, finally, while Jobs' words that echo most eerily today are not really apt for children ("Death is Very Likely the Single Best Invention of Life", he is eloquent about how facing death teaches us to live more fully), these sentiments resonate deeply in our parental bones and remind us to pursue our dreams and to embrace what is truly important in life.