Parenting by text
| November 25, 2012 | Posted by Sarah under general |
I find myself increasingly worried that a lot of my parenting happens by text message these days … either directly with the children or with Steve before one of us tries texting the kids!
There are good points to this:
- Even texts that SHOUT are quiet.
- Texting upstairs at 3am to tell teenagers to shut up beats having to get out of bed to do it.
- Conversations between parents can happen without children ‘hearing’ – the modern day equivalent of spelling words out, or using some other language known only to parents – mine used to converse in French!
- Discussions about how to handle x, y, z situations can happen while at work without boring the rest of the people at work with the details!
- It is possible to make a boring event pass much more quickly by discussing it with a teenager sitting miles away from you – not sure this is positive really but a couple of times recently I have been amused like this
- If not in the same place as a child, instructions can still be issued – and you know the teens will see them because they are joined at the hip to their phones (far more effective than leaving a note on the kitchen side).
- I do feel as though any communication with my teenagers is better than no communication! I also like keeping them on their toes by using abbreviations that they haven’t heard of, thereby making myself feel young and trendy!
The bad points, however:
- Steve and I are often not in the same place at the same time so seem to have important parenting discussions by text instead of in person. I don’t think this is great really, even though it’s better than not at all, and does have some positive aspects. Then again he, like the teenagers, does seem to pay more attention to his phone than to me so it works ok …
- Selective hearing can still apply ‘oh, I didn’t see that text, Mum’ (yeah right!)
- We don’t actually seem to be capable of making arrangements and sticking to them, we’ve become far too reliant on ‘oh, just text me when you need a lift’, or ‘I’ll text when I’m in the car park and you can come out’ etc.
- I don’t actually get free texts!
So, is it just me?
Any others to add to my lists?
I had a friend at school whose parents conversed in French so the children wouldn’t understand. She and her brother kept very quiet about just how good at French they were …
I’m a texting old fogey. C texts me in teenagerish txtspk and I reply with spelling and punctuation and everything
I have trained the girls to text properly
They also quite like to converse on chat, I find them far more chatty on facebook messenger than in real life. Sad but true!
neither of my girls have a phone yet, but BB is going for communicating via walkie talkie
my text is not txtspk either!