For many folks technology has quietly become a part of life . But if you’re a parent, it has arrived screaming at your door. Kids are wanting smartphones very early on - kindergarten is pretty common now for a smartphone. For various reasons parents buy into the technology drive and get their kids smartphones. At any age, parents wanting to get their kids smartphones is really the parents’ business...I’m more interested in if they know the door they’re opening and ready to take that walk with their child/ren?
Any decision we make is a step toward a path and a walk away from another - that’s how it goes. Sometimes this is conscious - I decide to go to college to become a teacher is a definite and conscious decision that will take me down a clear path, still with unknowns, but others have walked it and can leave guideposts for me to follow. Some decisions we make without really knowing what we’re getting into, either because it’s spur of the moment - like when I heard of a last minute Prince concert that was just added to the House of Blues at 1am and decided to go - or because it’s a new idea and few have embarked on this path - it is often this way with technology.
Technology has opened up a whole new path for parents that NO generation before ours has had to wrestle with ...kids having access to the world at any age! So how do we walk down this path when there is no history for it, especially when in parenting, we often use past experiences and learnings from our parents to guide us?!
Like all new information that comes our way, there is a steep learning curve and with technology it is on many fronts. Not only do we need to learn the technology tools, once we learn the interface of the tool, there is also understanding the virtual world it opens up and how to navigate this world.
Interestingly, with technology the driving discourse for parents is underlined with fear, and with fear comes a whole host of other elements: a need for control, judgment, push-back, retreating, etc. Often when I am invited to present to parents about technology I start with this idea right at the beginning. I know they are afraid. We are raising a generation of children who have access to a world we don’t understand and we don’t know where to find the key to enter this world. This is something that often eludes us - no wonder we’re scared! And to top it off, we have no parenting blueprint to help us navigate this world.
Thankfully there are folks who have ventured out into these parenting with technology waters and learned a few things, and when they came back to share, what they shared mattered less than how they shared. Many parents have gone to presentations, especially from law enforcement, where the speakers share with parents all the deep concerns they should have about the use of technology by children and teenagers. They tell them of sexting, cyberbullying and predators waiting to harm their children...all of which is part of the digital realm. It’s also part of the physical realm or “real world” as well. When you know little of a subject matter and hear about it from a position of fear, it can only serve to develop a negative perception. I discuss perceptions in depth in previous posts.
So I try to start with a positive perception when talking about technology. We’re already afraid of it and hesitant to use it. Worse, our kids are already using it and because we don’t understand it, we stay away and then really don’t understand what our kids are doing - good and bad - and have very little tools with which to guide them. Or we don’t just stay away from technology, we keep our kids away as well, and that in the long run can have negative consequences since health care and the tech industry are the jobs of the future.
Sometimes it’s helpful to think of technology as a pool. If in every home there was a pool - whether we wanted it or not - what would we do? We’d probably start by putting up a gate around it while we learn everything we can - to protect our kids especially. So now, while they are safe we begin by getting in the water slowly and learning how to move in the water. Maybe we take beginning swimming lessons, either by ourselves or with our kids. We learn how to maintain the pool and keep it in good health. And then, we get in the pool often to practice these new swimming skills and as the kids get better, maybe we take advanced swimming lessons. And the gate comes down, the kids know the rules for using the swimming pool and we know that at each age the rules are different and the guidance is also different. Maybe if we treat technology the same way we would move through it a little quicker and in the process, help our kids more effectively!
I try to take this position when talking about technology: yes, there are dangers and it’s important to know what they are and how to handle them, but there are oh so many benefits as well! And I show people what’s possible with technology - I share with them apps that I use in my everyday life right off of my phone that have helped make my life easier! Wunderlist to share grocery lists with my family before I go shopping. Waze to help me identify which is the fastest route to where I’m going using the awesome crowd sourcing tools it has. WhatsApp to communicate daily for free with my father who lives in another country. And Lyft when I need a quick ride somewhere and don’t have my car. Because I work in education, I also show them what students are doing with technology - using documents in the cloud like Google Drive to collaborate on projects. And by the way, because I have Google Drive on my phone for when I’m in a meeting and need to take notes unexpectedly or at a conference and want to capture the great ideas I’m hearing, I show people how I use these tools too - right on my smartphone! I show them VoiceThread and Padlet and the list goes on and on...their kids are creating and contributing to the body of knowledge in the world and it is exciting!!
When I think of parenting and technology, this is where I start...start with the wonders of technology...they’re already scared, I don’t need to scare them more. I want parents to feel empowered when they’re done talking to me - to know that parenting today is a humble path of learning and to know they too can become important contributors to this body of knowledge that is ever increasing with the diverse voices that are continuously streaming in!
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