Parenting in a 1:1 World

The 80's were a wonderful time. We were recovering oil crises of the 70's, elected an actor to be president, and embracing the brat pack.  Parenting was easy then too. Each night I would dutifully come home, hang my coat on a hanger, sit down at the table, quietly do my homework, set the table, have a quiet conversation with the family, kiss my mom good night and get ready for the next day. Come on now, my mom probably fell out of her chair reading that wishing that I would have just done one of those things. Parenting in the 80's was hard. Parents no longer could let their children play outside without being afraid that they would be kidnapped. AIDS was new to everyone and there was great fear of how it could be transmitted and who could get it. The great verbal battle between the superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States continued, as the US went everywhere to halt the spread of communism. There were real fears of nuclear war. Households began to have multiple televisions, more cars than drivers, three-way calling and call waiting became things, and those portable music players boom boxes and walkmen showed up everywhere. Parenting wasn't easy then. It wasn't easy in the 60's, the 40's, or the 20's. Think about it, try being a parent in the time of Prohibition. Parenting is hard, that is why so many family comedies resonate with us.

Douglas Adams in his book, A Salmon of Doubt, states three rules of technology:

"1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

The more I read that, the more that I find it to be true. There was a time in my life in which I could learn every technology. That time has passed. Even the most tech-saavy of us need at times to seed to the next generation to learn the nuances of these new tools and toys. However, just because I don't know every aspect of the technology, I can learn enough to parent my children with it. Here are some simple guidelines that we use in our household to parent with technology. Interestingly enough, they are very similar to those our parents used before us as they dealt with the issues of their time:

1) There are limits to everything in life. So we set a timer.

As a child of the 80's I can remember my parents and my uncle complaining of how much my cousins and I watched the "idiot box." It wasn't that there was high quality programming on, after all it was an event when we went over and watched the first Wrestlemania at their house. However, we would just as easily watch that as Jeopardy, Anne of Green Gables, and Thundercats. Eventually my Aunt and my parents set time limits for all of us regarding watching television. They were the generation to allow televisions to go into the bedroom and if we messed up, they were the generation to walk in and angrily take that television right out of the bedroom. In fact, focal point of the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on media, children, and screen time is focused on this phenomena of consumption media and has very little to do with children using computers and tablets in school. 

As we learned from our parents, we let our children know, that they have a set amount of time that they can use their tablets for entertainment purposes. We set timers. Frequently they comply. At times, we need to use the Find My Phone iPhone App to mark it as a lost phone and set a passcode on it. We have some great videos on the District 58 Parent Tech Support page to how to do this.

2) Device usage comes with supervision.

One of my great memories of the 80's was the movie Footloose. Great music, a young Kevin Bacon doing gymnastics as he rebelled against society. We learned that dancing could be evil. In the movie we see the townspeople have raided the library and are burning those items that are filling their children's heads with corruption. Media of all types have exposed the consumer to new ideas. Some healthy and some questionable. The obligation for both schools and parents has always been to teach our children how to handle ideas and content that we question. This is no different then when the Elvis and the Beatles influenced the world as it is now. The content is easier to access and we continue to need to help our children to learn to make good choices. The only way to do that is for us to be around when they encounter the media. Children should use their devices in a supervised family area. The same as they would with television. There is no need for children to sit in their room and play on their tablet, it is only for adult convenience do families allow it. At times, even with the best filters, children will hit inappropriate content, the same as they would trouncing through the library and flipping channels with the remote control, the trick is teaching children how to handle and move on when they find content that is inappropriate. This is what we need to teach as both adults and teachers.

3) The device is mine, you are simply borrowing it.

Before we drove the car for the first time, mom and dad explained the rules to the game. The Goldbergs did a terrific take on this in their episode, "Call Me When You Get There." If we didn't follow the rules, we were not allowed to drive. Well, sort of, we were not allowed to go drive where we wanted to go. We were still required to go to the store to pick up groceries we needed for dinner or drive to the pool to pick up our brothers from practice. We just weren't allowed to go driving where we wanted to go. The technique is the same today as it was then. Children are allowed to use their devices until its a problem. When it becomes a problem, they lose the privilege to use it for entertainment but still can use it for their classwork. When the work is complete, they put the device away. After a while, children earn back the privilege to use it for entertainment again.

4) Children don't have credit cards.

I remember when I got my first credit card. I was entering college. I had been lectured to several times regarding the dangers of credit cards before I was ever allowed to touch it. Even though credit cards usage is more widespread now, the same rules apply. Children and teens don't belong having credit cards. As such, please do not share your iTunes or Google Play account passwords with them. Make the child come to you to enter the password and approve the purchase. Furthermore, you paid for the app, you can decide if it is on or off the device. In the restrictions section of the device, set the password requirements to immediate when using the store functions. This will require children to have a parent enter the password to download or re-download apps. It seems like a pain, but truly can keep the balance of device control in the hand of the parent. Furthermore, I recommend turning off in-app purchases. Just like coins at the arcade, in-app purchases can create big costs really fast. There are a lot of good free and inexpensive apps, children don't need a daily roll of quarters at this arcade.

Parenting is hard. It always has been and always will be. It is the balance of loving our children and giving them a safe guided path through the world. While the tools and toys have changed, the core challenges have not. By setting similar boundaries that our parents did, we can guide our young padawans to grow up and become successful jedis.