I had a discussion with my teenage child in the car this
morning about the good ol' days. About
what it was like to literally have nothing to do. I don’t mean wishing that you could do
something that you weren't allowed to do like play on a computer or watch a show or text your
friends, I mean literally sitting on a stump in the woods looking at tree
bark with no idea what could come next. She was, in her own words, "flabbergasted that this could happen to a person".
I continued this review of my life's apparently banal history by sharing
that the songs on the radio that we hear now are completely shocking. Granted, our songs were shocking to our parents and our slow dances were much too close
for parents who had pioneered dances that resembled swimming. But have you heard the radio? If not you should know that songs have the word SEX actually IN them plus more. Again, this teen couldn’t fathom
what type of songs ours might have been, ones that didn’t describe intimate
sexy stuff in detail. What good might those
be? Where's the fun?
We talked a bit (it is a very long drive) about how this
whole parenting digital children thing is overwhelming – that while I can guess
at the right things to do, like spying and managing time and using computers in
public spaces, I don’t actually know for sure that these are the right things. "Maybe you should buy a handbook" she said. "Who
would write the handbook – no one knows the answers" I said. Cause it's true - we are all muddling
through this together anxiously awaiting the day that the handbook is published.
All of this discussion left her at carpool walking away from
the car hysterical laughing at my sad electronic free childhood and amazed at
the concept that a tape player could be in a car. As for me I felt sort of antique. I turned to the internet for
answers to discover that among all of that information, there are very few answers. For
every article about limiting screen time there is one about the value of time
spent learning to navigate the digital world.
I just read an article about why a messy bedroom is good for kids and
then right below it... yep, an article about
why it’s important for kids to learn to keep a tidy room.
So we navigate in little worried parenting silos and toss
opinions and new research around over coffees to validate our best guesses but
basically we just do our best, follow our gut, find inspirational quotes, hope
that we aren’t messing it all up.
Because we are writing the handbook and doing the research… right now
and how bizarre that right this moment there aren’t really right or wrong
answers. The opportunity sounds awesome,
right? The risk sounds terrifying too –
that every single parental approach that I can think of I can also discover an
opposite approach that has some shards of merit.
I guess this is the handbook-less generation that we have
but sometimes I wish there was a roadmap away from nasty song lyrics and
backlit screens and into the boring days of stump sitting and bark staring, it
sure seems simple about now.