How to use Snapchat to stay connected with your Children

Whether it’s for College, University or an Internship, here we are: after some vacation your teens are ready to go away…again.

On one side, the empty nest is waiting for you in the shadow, on the other side your sons and daughters may feel the need for a stronger sense of the Family, hard to achieve without a daily physical contact.

If your children use Snapchat, you can have its features as allies in order to fix these missings.

Snapchat: why should you use it?

WhatsApp, Telegram, Hangout…and the classic SMS app…

You have one or more of these apps installed on your device, and you are happy with them: all of your contacts are there.

So it’s natural to make your teens use your favorite apps. Forget it: if they are on Snapchat, then you make it one of your preferred app, and there are many reasons why you should join the white ghost.

Snapchat is the natural habitat for your teens.

Your sons and daughters are going to have a very busy Life while away from home.

Furthermore, they are required to learn how to live on their own, how to cook for themselves, how to clean their home, wash dishes, iron their clothes.

A real organizational stress if they never accomplished such tasks before.

Plus: they meet new friends and say goodbye to the old one, maybe forever.

That is, they are growing up.

It’s easy for your children to get lost: while they are in the rush they are not aware of the days passing by, and you await for them to remember to open your favorite instant messaging app and use it.

Instead of forcing them to seek you, let them find you straight where they are.

Let them open their favorite app and find your messages.

Snapchat features, your allies: how to use them the strategic way.

Snapchat has many features that may appear odd and hard to master to us.

Once you understand them, they will be your allies, and soon you’ll discover how what you see as weak points are real strenghts.

Let’s see what allies are going to help you, and tips to use them in the most effective way.

• It’s visual and fast to use

Though most of the other instant messaging apps allow people to share pictures and videos, they focus on text by design.

Snapchat is designed to share pictures and videos, so you take off your smartphone, open the app, and snap!: you have shared a visual content of yourself to your children.

And visual contents have great appeal to the youngest generations.

This makes you more comfortable with taking and sharing such a kind of content, and prevent your teens to get bored with your grey and flat text messages.

So you want to prefer pictures and videos to text.

Play with them, test doodles and add some funny text and emojis.

Be creative!

And if you fear to go wrong, relax and take it easy, for the following feature helps you with it.

If you share a picture or a video via direct message, the receiver is allowed to play it only twice. If you share something to your Story, it will last 24 hours.

Then it disappears forever.

You may argue that the receiver may take a screenshot of the picture, or record it by using a second device.

I agree, but think about it: new generations are very fast, and they hardly will stop their frantic Life to accomplish such “complex” actions.

So don’t worry if you send your sons and daughters a picture of yourself and fear to appear goofy: it’s not going to last.

And I share you a secret from my professional practice: kids and teenagers like people that show themselves as they are, without filters.

So don’t be afraid to be yourself, and…just snap it!

• Don’t merely send a message: tell your Story to your teens

Relationship changes when your teens are away from home, and the communication follows accordingly.

Messages like “Turn off the washing machine when you are back home” or “Stop at the store and take some milk” make no sense anymore.

The communication shifts from the little daily directions to the meaning of a brand new experience.

So you use the My Story feature to share your moments to your sons and daughters.

And you are able to listen to the Stories of your teens.

Once the daily micro-directions lose their meaning, something new emerges: two Lives meet together.

The visual nature of Snapchat creates a deeper sense of intimacy: you will have the feeling to be together and enter each others Life.

Furthermore Stories don’t send push notifications, so they are not intrusive.

You share your Life and leave it at your teens disposal, awaiting to be opened by them.

And believe me: when they will see your account above the others, they will open it!

You send direct messages only when you want to communicate something very specific (or urgent) to your children.

Parents, the human edition.

Being natural is the keyword when you share your snaps on Snapchat, and your sons and daughters will thank you for this.

They have grown up, they entered the age when parents are not those Gods they used to be in the childhood.

Teenagers see parents as they are: human beings, with their strenghts and their weaknesses.

The worst thing you can do as parents is trying to appear a super-parent at all costs: you will appear sham.

Snapchat helps you to humanize your role and lower the barriers between you and your little beloved ones.

After many years you had to keep the role of the iron man (or iron woman): now you have the opportunity to relax and start to be yourself again.

Isn’t it a good thing?

PS: if you want to know how to use Snapchat as a Parent join me there at

ivan_psy

Click my username above from your smartphone (with the App installed), add me by username or snap the code below from the Snapchat App:

Originally published at www.digitalparentingtips.com on April 15, 2016.