It
was the third set of a close match at my high school district tennis final. I had battled my way all season to earn
a spot on the district team, and this one was coming down to the wire when –
crack – the racquet broke. I had
forgotten to pack my trusted back up racquet made for my tiny hands, so I had
to make do with a teammate’s thick, unwieldy one. I lost the match and my intended path was perhaps forever
slightly altered.
An Iphone would have changed all that.
For if my mom had access to technology that wasn’t available in 1981, I could have caught her as she was driving to my match. A quick U-turn would have solved the problem and I’m positive you’d all know me by now, not from this blog, but from the Wheaties box.
I realize I’m putting way too much emphasis on this incident, but I recall it today as I ponder the influence technology has on today’s parenting. And the report is not all good.
Smart phones have made it much easier for parents to be overly involved and available. Admit it. You can’t even go to the grocery store without getting repeated text requests to “please buy Captain Crunch, at least this once?”
The phone rings with your teen’s ID and your first reaction is to answer like Pavlov’s dog. What if? What if they are lost in a local suburb? What if they got a flat tire? What if they were involved in a tragic accident? What if they need to know what to order at a restaurant?
That last one actually happened to a friend of mine who received a call from her daughter away at college. “Do I like clam chowder with a broth or a cream base?” she asked her mom.
I’m here to tell you that smart phones are turning us parents into a virtual on-call hotel concierge staff, available to answer any question, perform any task, settle any problem.
And that’s not good. Because by the time they are adults, they really need to have learned that they are their own best personal assistants. Disappointments, mistakes, forgotten homework and upsets make for resiliency and resiliency makes for successful human beings. We parents have to learn to stop rescuing with our digital devices, myself included.
It doesn’t help that many schools allow kids access to their phone from inside what used to be defined space between parents and children: the school wall. Kids are texting test results, school menus, instances of peer and teacher conflict and more. Parents are becoming immediate virtual counselors to their temporarily downtrodden kids, without allowing the situation to simmer a bit. Or – most important – make the kids figure it out for themselves.
I have changed the way I respond to occasional texts lobbed from behind the school walls. Often I ignore them. Yes, I do. If my daughter texts me that she has a headache and can’t decide if she needs to go to the nurse, I think back to my school days and remember that those kind of decision-making skills introduced me to myself. And I have been known to delay an answer for several hours. You may report me to child welfare if you are so inclined. Or you may raise your fist in a show of support.
What about college, which is approaching our door? In some ways, I think my own standard weekly Sunday phone calls home solidified my post-high school path of needed self-reliance. I also know that I may have to be medicated to prevent myself from calling my own daughter every day. An Iphone is like crack that way.
I’m not saying it’s all bad. Many a desperate call from my teen has made me thankful Steve Jobs was born. And you simply can’t beat the safety advantage. But perhaps we need to consider the smart phone in the context of the phrase “too much of a good thing” and pause a bit before we dispatch ourselves out on the latest rescue mission, whether virtually or physically.
I still wonder what would have happened if I had that tennis racquet in my hands, though.
An Iphone would have changed all that.
For if my mom had access to technology that wasn’t available in 1981, I could have caught her as she was driving to my match. A quick U-turn would have solved the problem and I’m positive you’d all know me by now, not from this blog, but from the Wheaties box.
I realize I’m putting way too much emphasis on this incident, but I recall it today as I ponder the influence technology has on today’s parenting. And the report is not all good.
Smart phones have made it much easier for parents to be overly involved and available. Admit it. You can’t even go to the grocery store without getting repeated text requests to “please buy Captain Crunch, at least this once?”
The phone rings with your teen’s ID and your first reaction is to answer like Pavlov’s dog. What if? What if they are lost in a local suburb? What if they got a flat tire? What if they were involved in a tragic accident? What if they need to know what to order at a restaurant?
That last one actually happened to a friend of mine who received a call from her daughter away at college. “Do I like clam chowder with a broth or a cream base?” she asked her mom.
I’m here to tell you that smart phones are turning us parents into a virtual on-call hotel concierge staff, available to answer any question, perform any task, settle any problem.
And that’s not good. Because by the time they are adults, they really need to have learned that they are their own best personal assistants. Disappointments, mistakes, forgotten homework and upsets make for resiliency and resiliency makes for successful human beings. We parents have to learn to stop rescuing with our digital devices, myself included.
It doesn’t help that many schools allow kids access to their phone from inside what used to be defined space between parents and children: the school wall. Kids are texting test results, school menus, instances of peer and teacher conflict and more. Parents are becoming immediate virtual counselors to their temporarily downtrodden kids, without allowing the situation to simmer a bit. Or – most important – make the kids figure it out for themselves.
I have changed the way I respond to occasional texts lobbed from behind the school walls. Often I ignore them. Yes, I do. If my daughter texts me that she has a headache and can’t decide if she needs to go to the nurse, I think back to my school days and remember that those kind of decision-making skills introduced me to myself. And I have been known to delay an answer for several hours. You may report me to child welfare if you are so inclined. Or you may raise your fist in a show of support.
What about college, which is approaching our door? In some ways, I think my own standard weekly Sunday phone calls home solidified my post-high school path of needed self-reliance. I also know that I may have to be medicated to prevent myself from calling my own daughter every day. An Iphone is like crack that way.
I’m not saying it’s all bad. Many a desperate call from my teen has made me thankful Steve Jobs was born. And you simply can’t beat the safety advantage. But perhaps we need to consider the smart phone in the context of the phrase “too much of a good thing” and pause a bit before we dispatch ourselves out on the latest rescue mission, whether virtually or physically.
I still wonder what would have happened if I had that tennis racquet in my hands, though.
