No matter what method a person chooses, parenting is hard. Like really, really, really hard. What is even harder than hard is having to figure out how to parent a child who has never known a world without a smartphone.
Before anyone raises their luddite pitchforks and lights their analog torches, this will not be a post about the evils of technology. If you know what I do for a living, you know that I actually support digital learning and how to help kids understand exactly what they are being handed when it comes to devices.
This post is to share some ways that I have decided to help my sons exist in a connected world. These ideas may not be what your family needs, and I completely respect that. Just keep in mind that technology isn't going anywhere, and if you are not teaching your children about these devices, someone else will.
Let's start with the access being handed to my kids every time they pick up their iPad or grab my phone. I could be handing them the whole wide world. All of it. Good and Bad. If I left it at that, it would be similar to me handing car keys to them and saying, "Good luck!" We train kids on functioning in life, why aren't we also training them to function digitally?
No parent is alone in this. Even better, we are almost TWO DECADES into the 21st century. Society has had a while to start figuring it out. A great place to start is simply monitoring and filtering devices as necessary. My 7-year-old does have an iPad that I have connected through Family Sharing with Apple. The only apps on there are the ones I allow. I can even set time limits for him to be in certain apps. On top of that, I only let him spend so much time on the iPad before making him do something else.
We got my 10-year-old a smartphone this year. Trust me when I say it can do two things: call me or message me. I have that thing so locked down. (If he didn't have to ride a bus to school, he wouldn't even have it. Ha ha ha.) I have Sprint Safe & Found installed, so the moment he turns it on I get an alert. Like when he snuck it to Perot Camp last week.
Sometimes I see parents afraid to be this involved in monitoring their children's devices. I'm not sure why. I am pretty positive the parents are paying the bill. I'm not advocating a 24/7 scroll through a kid's business, but I also believe sometimes for their own safety I need to get a scrollin'. You know?
Anyway, back to the phone at camp. The moment my son turned it on, my watch pinged as I was walking back to my car. It took everything in me not to turn around and march back into the museum to rip him a new one for the deceit. Then I stopped. As angry as I was, I knew embarrassing him was not the way to go. Don't get me wrong. That boy is still grounded from his Switch, but I realized there was more to this. I asked him why he felt he had to take it. He told me that all the other kids were watching Harry Potter related videos on YouTube (Wizarding World was the theme of the camp), and he wanted to watch them on his phone.
How innocent right? My kid is still 10. He doesn't know what kind of horrors could be lying in wait out there? I mean, all he usually does is watch Minecraft videos. He is in a world where a room full of 5th and 6th graders means a room full of smartphones. Even though the legal age for kids to be on social media is 13*, I don't want to just throw him at Snapchat on his 13th birthday just like I don't plan to throw him in a car at 16 and hope for the best. Instead we made a deal. For the past week and a half, I have done mini-lessons and watched videos with him. The lessons focus on his online presence, and the videos are about using Instagram positively. Once he completed the lessons, I promised to open a MONITORED Instagram account for him. When he turns 13, it will become 100% his. I have three years to guide him when it comes to being online.
How did I do it?
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| MAGIC OF COURSE! |
Just kidding. There are so many tools out there. Common Sense Media has an entire section for families including ways to teach your kids how to be online. Their curriculum is so strong that many school districts actually use it.
I went with Google's Be Internet Awesome. I actually have the educator's edition, but they do have one made for families. There are scenarios/lessons that they have gamified to help kids navigate the internet. I decided to pair it with a favorite book of mine, a fantastic read that actually impacted my own social media presence, Light, Bright, and Polite by Josh Ochs. His website (SmartSocial) is also full of resources for families growing internet savvy kids.
My son was so proud of the certificate he received for completion of Be Internet Awesome. As promised, I opened him an Instagram account. We walked through settings and some basic ways to post. As a matter of fact, you are welcome to follow him. I cannot promise the most engaging content, he is still learning after all. You will need to be approved, and he and I discussed what to do if we cannot recognize a user requesting permission to follow him.
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| @will.croupe |
Now the day will come when he makes a mistake. He is human. He is about to enter pre-teendom. I cannot shield him from it. I will say that I would rather be here to guide him through the learning experience.
I cannot promise anyone this is the best way to do any of this. It could epically fail. In the end, I will take this risk in hopes that my son comes out better for it.
*Yes, that is true. If your kid is younger than that and on those apps without your permission they are breaking the law.
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