Being Sara

Last week’s post generated some excellent discussion! I definitely agree with Chloe and Mary that everything in moderation seems to be the way to go. Too much of anything is generally a bad thing. That being said, Xander definitely doesn’t spend all of his time chasing electronics around the house. He plays with everything else you would expect a toddler to play with - balls, blocks, cars and trucks, action figures, chasing the cats, climbing on everything that will stand still long enough, and books. I’d like to think that we are doing the whole moderation thing well. But I still marvel at how things have changed so much from one generation to the next. I know my parents weren’t concerned about over-exposure to technology when I was a child. They didn’t have to worry about me playing too many video games, watching too much television (at least not until I was in elementary school), or getting exposed to the dangers of the internet.

Ben made several excellent points in his comment. I entirely agree that we need to be aware of how our children are using resources. It is so easy for predators. I know a 14-year-old girl who was lured by a predator to a city (he paid for her taxi while her mother was at work) to a hotel room. When he was done with her, he packed her back into a taxi and sent her back home. It was that easy for him.

I think we do need to be aware of the resources out there and how to use them. We need to have our own facebook and myspace accounts - if only to gain a little more insight into our children’s world. We need to understand social networking so that we can teach our children how to use it appropriately. I think it’s naive to believe that a child doesn’t participate in social networking just because they have limited access to the internet. It’s hard to find a teenager these days who doesn’t have an account to one of the social networking sites. Instead of burying our heads in the sand, we need to understand the powers of social networking, and set appropriate limits for our children.

Along with the most commonly thought of dangers in social networking comes a new age of bullying. Rumors can spread so much more quickly and easily. Reputations can be built and destroyed in a matter of seconds. The things that kids fearlessly write to one another online follow them to school the next day. I just finished reading a novel by Jodi Picoult called Nineteen Minutes - it’s all about a school shooting.  Although it’s fiction, the ways in which the shooter is bullied in school sound just like techniques any kid today could use - forwarding a personal email to the entire school, using text messages and instant messages to taunt and bully the boy, etc.  These are all things that parents need to know about, and I think that Ben is correct in saying that far too many parents prefer to see their straight A student, and happily ignore anything that doesn’t fit into this stereo-type. 

Thankfully, Xander has several years before we’ll have to address this issue. I can’t honestly say I know what we’ll do when we reach that bridge. Currently, we have 2 desktop computers in our house - one in our living room and one in our kitchen (I know the kitchen is a little weird - we use it to store recipes and to play music while we’re cooking/eating). I suspect that we’ll continue to keep computers in common living spaces, but perhaps we won’t allow them in bedrooms where we can’t see what is going on. Some parents keep their children’s login information so that they can access the account on a regular basis and make sure that nothing inappropriate is happening. Some parents talk to their kids about internet safety and trust their children to be responsible. I don’t know how we’ll address this issue - I think it will depend on what kind of kid Xander is and where social networking is at when he gets interested in it. Luckily, both Zach and I are involved in technology. I also work with college students who provide me with an excellent window into how they use social networking software. I hope that this knowledge will help us to educate Xander, and also be aware of his activities on line. If you have any thoughts or experiences with children and social networking software, I’d love to hear about them!

toddler, baby, parent, parents, parenting, mother, mothers, motherhood, social network, social networks, social networking, children and social networks, parenting and social networks, parental awareness, internet safety, internet bullying

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