My son started his own blog this week, its called “Zac Wonders”. He is very excited about it and it is encouraging him to write about things he thinks about. I am acting as his editor. He loves to take photos, so this has been a good way for him to use digital photography and digital story telling software as tools. This makes me realize how important it is to help our kids how to navigate their digital culture.
Kids today have so many choices on how and with whom to communicate. They also have more choices than I ever did on where they can travel-virtually that is. One of my jobs as a parent of 3 daughters who were pre-teens as the social media craze took off back in the 90’s was to protect them from this digital world that was invading our world. It was scary to me! Who are they talking with? Back then I remember they had their home phone still stuck to one ear, while they sat in front of our computer monitor that was stationed in the loft area of our upstairs hallway. As a parent, I always knew when they were on the computer and would supervise by walking around and checking out what they would be writing, etc. Yes, there were a few times when they had to be barred from the internet, due to breaking important rules such as: keeping up with homework for example.
Today, this scenario has changed in my home in the following ways: the computer monitor still sits in the hallway; but no one ever uses it, because everyone in our house now owns their own laptop. This creates a new challenge: how or when to monitor? Thankfully, I only have one child left for which this is a concern. My youngest daughter who still lives at home is old enough that I rely on her wisdom. My son however, must ask permission when he wants to use his laptop. Right now, it is mostly for playing online games with his cousin. He has been able to Skype with his cousins from Houston, playing Scattegories with them and with family when he has gone away on vacation. For him, this is not a novelty, as it is for me. One other thing that has changed is that land phones are practically non existent anymore. We have a portable phone upstairs that only my son uses. The rest of us use our cell phones. My almost 20 year old daughter doesn’t talk on the phone, she texts almost everyone. Problem is, with whom is she texting? But as I said, she is now past the age where I can control that anymore. This is why my son is not yet an owner of a cell phone. Of course, he has reminded us many times how horrible we are as parents (unlike his friend’s parents) who allow their children to have their own cell phones. Hey, this pressure existed before cell phones…there is always something other parents get their kids that our kids won’t get-so this doesn’t really affect my parental self esteem at all.
Back to Zac’s blog: so this will be new territory for me too. He and I are both learning, just like I learned about the social media networks along with my daughters. Today I don’t find social networking sites so scary, in fact, it is how I communicate daily with my daughters. I know the limits and am aware of how important it is to manage my online persona so that it doesn’t control me. This is what I need to model for my child. This is the challenge for all us parents and teachers-that we have a responsibility not only to monitor what our kids do but to walk with them into the digital world hand in hand.
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