Digital Parenting Includes Watching Texters Evolve

I’m carpooling the girls home from school and it occurs to me as I listen to a cacophony of texting clicks behind me why illustrations of extraterrestrials only have a thumb and a crab-like pincher on each hand.  That is what I picture the human race must be evolving toward.  

I have to admit that I have not had the stereotypical battle with our tweens over getting access to our home phone.  Nor have we had the Brady Bunch experience of having to install a pay phone because of the phone bills.  

Thank God we got the unlimited texting plan before it vaporized. Someone at AT&T must have been fired over that one.  I can just hear the last conversation before they kicked the poor sap out the door:  “Unlimited what?  What were you thinking?  Obviously you were NOT thinking!  Don’t let the door hit you in the asterisk on your way over to Verizon!” 

I sometimes hear other parents say that raising kids is a lot more complicated than it was when we were growing up.  I’m not sure that I agree, but there are certainly a lot more ways for kids to communicate these days. “Yeah … right?!” Perhaps they communicate faster because of the technology, but I don’t know that communicating faster and more often is necessarily a bad thing.  

My kids seem to have avoided the long-criticized pitfalls of email for communicating effectively.  My corporate days were filled with examples of emails that unintentionally set off alarm bells.  There would soon be follow-up emails, retractions, and even personal office visits (how caveman!) to reiterate the message and subdue hurt feelings and bruised egos.  Remember the mantra?  “Don’t say anything in an email that you don’t want everybody to read.” 

The same goes today with social networking sites, but so far, our kids seem to have traversed this minefield with relative ease.  Yes, there is the occasional Facebook attack, and there is the kid who says stuff online that would cause a potential employer or college to return their application to the “No!” pile.  I suspect it’s the parents in these cases who gave the digital keys to their kids too soon. They let their kids out to play on the digital highway before they checked out the traffic. 

My kids are just a few short years away from getting onto asphalt at 60 mph and finding their way up the freeway amid heavy big rigs and tiny Smart Cars. Besides sending them to driving school, I can help to ensure that the car is safe, runs well and that the brakes work. The rest is up to them. 

This is the world our kids are moving into, and someday they will be running. So trust but verify. As long as the homework and the household chores are done, they are getting good grades, and they are still respectful of their old folks, then let them text until their thumbs turn blue. As long as they can still communicate the old-fashioned way around the dinner table, “it’s all good.”

At the same time they can expect that Mom or Dad will be taking the occasional peek under the hood of the laptop and/or the smart phone.  

Lights out at 9 p.m., kids!  That means iPods, too!