Where’s an 11 year old when you need one?
I have an IQ of 126. I aced high school with a string of A’s. I launched my own company specialising in digital content creation. I am a mother of 4. So why, oh why, can I not figure out the intricacies of an Xbox?
Why am I constantly lagging behind my kids in the app stakes?
When I finally mastered the art of Snapchat and sent my 15-year-old daughter a ‘snap’, she came out of her room, gave me her, ‘are you serious?’ look — you know the one, that would leech all the happy from of the Dalai Lama — raised an impressively patronising eyebrow, and said, “No, Mother.”
Then she went back into her room and shut the door with an exasperated sigh.
What?! What just happened?
Pride and sassy hipness deflated, I deleted Snapchat.
Technology, prevalent to an almost insidious amount in our society, is everywhere.
And yet there are those of us in our, ahem, mumbling something about ‘naughties’, who still can’t get our laptop to stop random upgrades while we’re in the middle of watching romcom trailers on YouTube.
Speaking of YouTube, my 9 year old has had his own channel for months! And he’s busy making movies from his summer road trip to upload! I mean, what is happening?! I don’t have a YouTube channel. Should I? Should I be keeping up with the kids?
Or should I simply relinquish control of household technology to the under 18’s and be done with it?
No. I don’t think that’s the answer. So what is?
Here’s what I’d love to happen — and you may call me a hopeless idealist, but just imagine for a moment how we, as parents, could change the current tech-is-for-teens status quo and create a society where tech = connectivity within families.
I would love for technology to be a bridge. It is in many aspects already — a bridge between our peers and friends on Facebook; between our work colleagues in other cities on Skype, Wrike, and Slack; a bridge to our finances with goMoney and Sorted; a bridge to practically anything you can think of; but not yet a bridge between families.
Imagine technology bringing us closer to our children. I know, I know, it sounds like an irresolvable paradigm, but imagine if we worked together as families to connect on levels the modern kid understands. They’re so very tech savvy that sitting down for a deep and meaningful doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. Family dinners are often punctuated by incessant bleeps from several phones or tablets. Even with staunch rules about no tech at the table, how many of us succumb to the guilt pressures of the adolescent whinge about ‘really important sh*t going on you can’t possibly understand, man’. I know I can put my hand up right there!
It’s only a matter of time before we become our parents, our grandparents, waxing lyrical about the good old days when, ‘a phone had a cord and there was no way it reached my bedroom!’ When, ‘we had real books, not Facebooks.’ When ‘a button held your pants up, not linked you to the interweb!’
I don’t want to be that parent. I want to understand what our children’s generation are dealing with. They have a constant finger on the pulse of the digital world. Schools are starting to expect them to have a laptop, or a tablet, or a phone at least, to Google answers or download maths programmes.
I want to be the parent who welcomes the digital age, embraces it, and learns from that sassy 15 year-old who doesn’t want me on her Snapchat. What are the limits? How do I connect with you, honey?
I want to be the parent whose 11-year-old son sits down and explains what an HDMI cable is, where it goes, and why everyone has to have a separate account on Xbox Live.
I want to be the parent who asks the 9-year-old to show her how he cut his YouTube video together.
I want to connect with them. I want them to connect with me. And I want us to use our connectivity to share what we’re doing, what we’re learning with our greater family.
As I write my two younger lads are headed to town on their bikes to get sushi. As they were leaving I called after them, “Have you got your phones?”
“Yes!”
Phew. I have a link to them. This is a good thing. We’re still connected even though they are going to physically be on the other side of our small town.
So technology can be good. It can be amazing. It can be something that brings us closer together, not further apart or deeper into a future of digital isolation.
It’s all in how we use it. It’s how we embrace it into our homes. How we admit we can learn from our children and enjoy the process.
And it’s how we use it to connect to those we love that matters.
-Carla Munro
Mother to four intensely creative kids, Carla Munro is the founding director of blackrobin.co, is obsessive about a tidy kitchen, has been known to sing in public, and believes inherently that technology and Intuitive Living combined is the answer to — well just about everything!
Originally published at www.kin2kin.com.
