Helicopter parenting, parenting mistakes

22. August 2011 · 9 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
W flies home

Image by lorda via Flickr

Recently, I saw a couple of articles lamenting the helicopter parents.  I am anything but a helicopter parent, though sometimes I wish I had been at times.  There are things I look back on now, like the beginnings of Geeky Boy’s struggle with homework.  Work for both Mr. Geeky and I was too overwhelming for us to intervene much, except to ask whether it was done or not.  Perhaps I should have insisted someone be home when he got home.  Instead we checked in via home, and came home as early as possible.  I didn’t call teachers, though I did touch base with a counselor at one point to try to help Geeky Boy with organization.  I feel, rightly or wrongly, that the habits we’re trying to break now were a result of our lack of intervening–either with Geeky Boy himself or with the school.

Some people have said to me, “just crack the whip, force him to buckle down.” Or some such severe discipline.  I sigh.  Been there. Doesn’t work.  Instead, we get a kid with an even bigger ball of stress to deal with.  And, frankly, he’s his own person.  There are some things that can’t be forced.  But we’re talking about it now.  I just wish we’d started sooner.

I don’t remember ever having to be told how to deal with school.  My parents were really laid back about everything to do with grades, etc.  When boys and alcohol caused my grades to plummet, they just assumed things were getting harder, especially math.  I lived the kind of life Samantha Bee writes about in the WSJ.  I came home, did my homework (which often only took about an hour), and then vegged in front of the tv.  Sometimes I read or wrote or called people on the phone (a landline even!).  But it was very leisurely.  And summer, aside from a two-week vacation, I spent most of it at the pool.  I did no academic camps or music camps or sports camps, though I did have a few friends who did.  I just wasted that good at sports, and music wasn’t my thing.  And yes, I was college bound and smart, but my parents didn’t try to groom me to be a NASA scientist.  I consider myself a late bloomer when it comes to figuring out what to do with my life, to finding something that I really like doing and that pays the bills to boot.  I keep that in mind when I see where Geeky Boy is.

Yes, some parents around here send their kids to academic camps at UPenn or Johns Hopkins or they’re in soccer camp or lacrosse camp or tennis camp.  Some kids are booked the whole summer.  We just don’t have the resources for that.  Yes, it’s been difficult keeping the kids busy.  We’ve gone to the pool.  I’ve encouraged reading and writing.  I’ve assigned chores.  But summer days are long, and there’s only so much structured activity anyone can do.  And while I may have my regrets, I’m not so sure my “cracking down” or scheduling more for the kids would have made them any better off.  I think all of us would have been a bit less happy (and certainly poorer).  And I think the payoff for some of those things is short term–it gets you into the. best. college.  Except when it doesn’t.  Only time will tell how things will turn out.  Which is kind of the sucky thing about parenting.  Feedback comes really slowly.

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What is summer for?

08. July 2011 · 5 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Do you remember your summers? Were you required to read, go to academic classes, or practice math? No, me neither. Mr. Geeky and I revisited the kids vegging out issue this morning. He thinks they’re vegging out too much. I say, meh, whatever.  I vegged out in the summer and look how I turned out.  The thing is, I overscheduled myself this summer.  And when I’m not scheduled to do something, *I* want to veg out.  I spent the first part of the summer working almost every day, even weekends.  When the last conference was over last week, and the family was gone, I balanced out doing work, cleaning the house, and having fun.  I went to the dog park, played WoW, and watched a couple of movies.  When the family got back, the Sunday before July 4th, we continued to laze around a bit, and I’ve pretty much done very little work this week.  I went into work Tuesday, and I poked at a project yesterday, but today I woke up feeling a little ill, so I’m planning to take it easy.

The thing is, I’m lucky.  I should take advantage of that luck, of having weeks of free time and not spend it doing work or thinking I should be doing work (which is really what I do when I’m not doing work.  Witness the writing of this post to justify said not doing work.).  When I was Geeky Girl’s age–that is, 12–I went to the pool almost every day, or I played at a friends house or we went to matinees.  When I was Geeky Boy’s age–16–I did have a job, but I didn’t work the whole summer, and I still went to the pool when I could and I took at least a two-week vacation with my family.  I didn’t not, at any time, do any kind of enrichment activities.  I was a smart kid and that just wasn’t the culture then.  Now, as I think Mr. Geeky and I both feel, the culture is different.  It feels weird somehow to tell friends that your kids are actually just hanging out this summer, not working, not going to camp.  Geeky Boy is going to a class every afternoon from 1-4:30.  It takes 45 minutes to drive there.  When he’s not in class, he’s on the computer.  And therein lies our trouble.  Nowadays, kids’ leisure time is more likely to take place in front of a screen rather than at a pool or hanging out at a friends house doing something non-screen related.  And that makes me anxious.

When I was a kid/teen, my parents didn’t much care what I did in the summer.  Or after school or at night for that matter.  Somehow, we all now feel like we have to structure our kids’ time, even their leisure time.  Is that fair?  Does it help or hurt?  I really don’t know, but I know I both don’t like it and feel uncomfortable when I’m not structuring their time enough.

Organizing summer

06. June 2011 · 5 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

Mr. Geeky and I were just discussing how to organize our kids this summer.  Geeky Boy is going to one camp.  Geeky Girl isn’t going to any, so we have long days ahead of us.  Though we want them to have relaxing summers, we also don’t want them to totally veg out. Mr. Geeky and I both have work to get done, and my personal plan is to work in the mornings and take the afternoons off.  A few summers ago, perhaps when I was still working on my dissertation, that’s exactly what I did, and it worked well.  I spent a focused 3 or 4 hours in the morning working, and then could relax guilt free in the afternoons.

We want the kids to do the same thing.  Both have summer reading to do.  We’d like them to do some other academic-like work.  We’d even be open to them playing music and other non-computer-like activity.  So we’ll figure out a plan and see what we all come up with.  What do you all do with your long summer days?

Parenting: Ur Doing it Wrong

18. January 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Lots of brouhaha over parenting this week in the blogosphere.  The loudest complaints coming from arguments about “Chinese mothers” vs. American ones.  Go find the articles.  You’ve read them or heard about them.  The basic argument is that we Americans are too permissive and soft as parents and that only Asian parents, who insist on violin lessons, science fairs, and no social life will have successful kids.

The sucky thing about parenting is that you never know if you’re doing it right until you get to the end. And even then, you might not really know.  Oh, sure, sometimes you see your kid go off the rails in the teenage years (I’m there, people), and you wonder if it’s your fault.  Did you not read to them enough? Did working full time harm them in some way? Should you have insisted on that science camp back in 7th grade?  I personally don’t see permissive parenting happening around me.  I see a lot of anxiety among parents and kids about doing it right–mostly for the golden ticket into the “right” college.  I get it.  Getting into the “right” college seems to be the ticket to success.

At least that’s the line we’ve all been fed around here.  And yes, some of it is true.  But what is the right college? And for that matter, what is success?  Being around high achievers, which many of us in education (higher and otherwise) are, makes one define success fairly narrowly.  And that’s not really fair.  It’s not fair to our kids and it’s anxiety-producing for most of us as parents.

I had to redefine success for myself as I rejected the typical path for a person with a Ph.D., and I’ve had to step back and let my kids define success for themselves.  It’s a harder thing than one might think.  I, like many parents, had an idea of what my kids would be like.  But they haven’t turned out that way.  They’ve surprised me.  At first, I found that surprise unpleasant, but now, I’m delighted.  As a parent, I’ve simply tried to provide the scaffolding and support for the success my kids are starting to define.  And yes, that sometimes means lessons and insisting on certain grades.  But I’ve learned there’s only so much I can do as a parent.  At a certain point, it’s up to my kids, and I just have to wait and see.  And yes, the waiting is killing me.

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Life, disrupted

26. May 2010 · 5 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Yesterday was a crazy day.  It shouldn’t have been but it was.  The morning was fine.  I worked on a couple of things. I got some stuff together that needed to be mailed off.  Before lunch with a friend, I dropped it at the post office.  After lunch, I had planned to go by Geeky Girl’s school and get some materials I needed to prepare for a lesson I’m doing today.  I had been by the day before and they weren’t there, so I double checked the information when I got home and planned to pick them up after lunch.  Only, again, they weren’t there.  So I emailed the other volunteers and watched as the hours went by with no response.  Geeky Boy had something in the afternoon which he insisted he didn’t have and when he called to check, he found out that yes, he did have it, but it got postponed because we were late.  Which meant that *I* had to reschedule something I had later, which bummed me out because the thing I had was supposed to be fun.  I made dinner, ate dinner, and did more stuff that was not my own and got disrupted by one kid or another every time I tried to do something.  And then I passed out before 10.

I was kind of cranky yesterday.  I hate being cranky.  You’d think by now I’d be used to the fact that kids are disruptive.  One of our friends back in grad school when we asked him to describe what life was like with a kid (before we had any), he said, “It’s like watching Jeopardy and then not ever getting to see final Jeopardy.”  This was also before Tivo and DVRs, which have been a boon to at least that kind of disruption.  I think one of the hardest things for me as a parent is realizing that your life isn’t always your own.  You are responsible for the well-being of others and that often means that you don’t get to do what you want when you want to.  Now I’m a “put your own oxygen mask on first” kind of parent.  I believe in taking time for yourself and not putting your whole life into your kids.  And, I think I’ve done a good job over the years of doing that.  But sometimes, you have absolutely no choice.  And I don’t mean just in emergencies.  Sometimes, the kids just have to come first.

Now that my kids are older, there are less disruptions, but they’re still there.  And because they’re more infrequent (they used to be constant), I get cranky about them.  I really shouldn’t.  Also as the kids get older, I realize how little time I have left with them living under my roof.  In three years, Geeky Boy will be off to college (presumably) and then on to other things.  And Geeky Girl is just 7 years away.  That time will go by quickly.  It’s hard sometimes to pull oneself back to the present, to being in the moment and really appreciating it, rather than thinking about what your kids are keeping you from doing.  Or worse, looking *forward* to the time when they’ll be gone.  Because when I really think about it, I don’t look forward to it.  I will miss seeing them every day and talking to them.  I will actually miss those disruptions, the questions, the stories, the funny observations.  And I know I’ll still worry about them, hope for them, and be happy for them.  And I’ll wish for their disruptions.  For now, I have to think of them not as disruptions, but as moments of connection, time to be together.

Technology and Kids’ Friendships

03. May 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
Texting
Image by Adam UXB Smith via Flickr

The New York Times reports on the latest Pew findings about how much time kids spend texting each other.  A side note: why do they always put these articles in fashion? Seriously?  Why not technology?  It seems to me that putting in the tech section would accomplish two things.  One, it might get the tech audience to think about some of the implications of the gadgets and software they’re so interested in reading about.  And two, it might get some parents and teachers who are otherwise clueless about what’s out there to find out more about trends in technology.  Just a thought.

So anyway, the article begins with the usual scare mongering about how all this technology is changing the nature of friendships and for the worse.  I think it’s important to consider the downside to anything, but it’s also important to consider the upside, the possibility that a change might actually be a good thing.  Which, thankfully, the second half of the article does.  Parents say that they believe texting has brought their kids closer to their friends.  Some parents even suggested their shy and withdrawn kids sign up for Facebook.

One thing the article doesn’t mention is the possible connection between parents’ fears about child abduction, etc. and the use of technology.  What I mean by that is that we are less likely, have been less likely, to let our kids wander over to a friend’s house or to the park to meet up with friends.  So texting and Facebook and MySpace and online games are a substitute for those face-to-face interactions.  It’s possible that the turn to online interactions would have happened anyway, without the parenting changes, because of the novelty of those interactions.  But we should always consider that there are larger society shifts at play and that the introduction of technology might not be the only thing causing the shift.

Also, there’s barely a mention of balance.  One mother notices her son is becoming more withdrawn as he turns to the computer for most of his personal communication, and so she signs him up for some activities that are face-to-face.  And I think that’s key.  I’m less concerned about my kids hanging out online when they are also playing sports or participating in other face-to-face activities.  And I think that’s important.  In the summer, I limit the amount of time the kids spend online even more because they don’t have the natural interactions of school to turn to.  And the weather is nice enough that I can kick them outside for a few hours.  If we get a really nasty rainy day, I’ll extend time online as a treat, but even then, I also make them go read or play a board game.  It’s all about the variety of activities, and I’m always trying to encourage that variety.

Geeky Boy communicates with most of his friends (and his girlfriend–yikes!) through texting, Facebook, or Runescape.  But much of that communication is about arranging occasions to meet.  And he spends a fair amount of time actually talking on the phone as well.  The one thing I will say that’s disappointing about all this online communication is that I know less about his friends than my parents knew about mine.  My friends often had to talk to my mom or dad first before they’d hand over the phone to me and they’d come by the house or one parent or another would drive us all to the mall or the movies or the pool.  Now, they’re not allowed to be dropped off anywhere, mostly and no one has cars, so I’ve met very few of Geeky Boy’s friends.  Maybe that will change when they start to drive, or maybe it will all remain a mystery.

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How technology, especially video games, is ruining us all

14. April 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

I have a Google search feed with the key words “video games education” in it because I have an interest in the use of video games for learning.  What I find interesting, however, is that a certain portion of articles that come through this feed are not about that, but are about how video games are terrible in multiple ways.  Among recent titles and pull-out quotes are these:

  • With technologies such as the Internet, video games, television and iPods, it’s difficult to get together and spend some time with your family.
  • Texting, video games, iPods, and Facebook have replaced playing, daydreaming, reading, and creating.
  • US: Women gain in science while video games hold back boys
  • I think alot [sic] of teacher really are doing there [sic] job but the parents got to get involve more instead of letting those kids watching tv,playing video games,etc
  • Besides, they have a BETTER WORK ETHIC than a lot of lazy, ENTITLED American children with their video games, ipods, cell phones, and tvs in their rooms.

That last is from a comment on a protest by NJ teachers, who are potentially going to be laid off as a result of some severe cuts to education that Gov. Christie is proposing.  I couldn’t find the comment he/she was responding to, but it’s pretty easy to guess what the substance of it was.

There’s a whole “kids these days” kind of tone to many of these articles, blaming them for their immersion in technology, sometimes blaming the parents.  I was kind of glad to see tv thrown in there a couple of times, because often people regard television watching as superior to spending time online.  I’d rather my kids play an online game for an hour than watch some of the stuff that’s on tv.  Even though these articles are not what I’m looking for, I find they provide an interesting perspective on the portrayal of video games in the media.

And yes, I know it’s WoW Wednesday and I’ve been remiss in posting.  I promise two more posts today, actually, a WoW one, and an exciting review.  Stay tuned!

Parenting in the Online World

13. April 2010 · 6 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

It is in theory a theme of this blog to discuss issues related to parenting and managing technology.  And I do.  A quick search of parenting and technology or kids and technology will yield quite a few posts.  Laura pointed to this New York Times article about how parents’ concerns about the Internet have shifted from worrying about online predators to concern over cyber bullying.  Frankly, I think the shift is good.  The likelihood that a child will be harmed by an online predator is very, very slim while the chances that they’ll be exposed to harmful comments and even hurt by them by friends and acquaintances is pretty certain, sadly.

Laura asked about parental security software and I rejected the idea completely in my comments.  I think software to “protect” your kids from bad things online is pretty silly, actually.  First, it’s not perfect at determining what’s bad, and it might block good things and not block all the bad things.  Second, if, as a parent, you think it is blocking all that it needs to, you might stop paying attention to what your kids are doing online.  The best way, I think, to help your kids navigate the online world is to stay involved.  Here are some things you need to do:

1. Get online yourself.  Set up a Facebook account.  Figure out how it works.  Friend your kids–yes, friend them and don’t let them block you.  Do not, however, post things about what your kids post publicly.  That’s just mean.  If you have a problem with something, talk to them about it.

2. Keep the computer in a public place and check in with your kids while they’re online.  Stand over them and ask, “So, what are you looking at?”  Ask lots of questions about what they’re doing or have been doing online.  Do it in a way to show interest–your kids will find some funny and interesting things that you will never find–but also have a critical eye about what they’re viewing and think about whether it’s appropriate.

3. Talk to your kids about appropriate behavior online.  We started with not posting personal information like address and phone number.  Now we’re talking about posting things that might get them in trouble when applying to college or a job.

4. Limit the amount of time your kid spends online.  This is the hardest for us.  Since we both work online and play online, we blur the distinction.  Our kids can’t tell if we’re working or playing while we’re on the computer and we’re on pretty constantly.  The same is becoming true of our teenager.  He had to make a video for class and a lot of his assignments are posted online.  As a typical teenager, he multitasks, switching between Facebook, YouTube and his schoolwork.  We’re just beginning to talk to him about limiting the multitasking.

The site mentioned in the NY Times article, Common Sense Media, is a good one and one I’ve mentioned to parents and teachers.  There, you can find out trends and if your teens or kids aren’t forthcoming about what’s happening online, can give you some material to work with when asking questions.  They also offer programs and curriculum for schools, which some schools are adopting.  It’s a very good idea.

Even with all of the checking up and checking in, your kids will do things you don’t know about.  Geeky Boy uses the IM feature in Facebook more than anything.  I have no access to those messages.  He also texts a lot on his phone.  Again, I don’t see those.  But I ask about them.  Over spring break, his phone kept buzzing and  he kept texting and I asked, “Who are you texting?” And thus, found out about the girlfriend.  We have rules, which he’s been mostly good about following.  The phone cannot be out during family interactions–at the dinner table, during a family outing, etc.  It has to stay in the office during the evening (to avoid middle of the night texting).  And it will get taken away if his grades fall.  Yes, it’s a brave new world, but it seems better to me than some of the things I did as a teen, most of which involved being in places where my parents had no way of contacting me if they even knew where I was.

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Friday Fun: School-Homing

09. April 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Via Anya Kamenetz, this article on how homes are becoming dangerous places to raise kids and parents lack the specialized knowledge to do so.

Speaking of going back to work

08. April 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Here’s a really interesting article in the WaPo about an over 50 lawyer’s struggle to find work after being out of full-time employment for 17 years.  It is both sobering and uplifting.

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