Thriving as a Digital Parent
I have 3 kids. A 10 year old, an 8 year old, and a 7 month old. All of them (even the baby) love digital toys.Today was like any other day. My 8 year old gets out of bed early, gets ready for school on his own, makes his own breakfast, then comes and asks us... "Can I play DS until it's time to go to school?" The older kids go to a charter school that emphasizes technology. They came home from the first week of school and told us they could now share their work with us via Google Docs. On long trips I don't have to worry about texting while driving because my kids are playing games or watching a video on my wife and my iPhones the entire time.It's no wonder sociologists are calling our kids generation, The Digitals. Over the summer my son actually cried when I told him he needed to take a couple days of his summer break to have non-digital adventures. Like reading a novel or playing outside.Surviving it and thriving in this new environment of parenting are two different things. It'd be easy to keep buying new games or just pay the monthly internet bill... but that's just surviving and I want to thrive.Mashable recently posted some parenting tips that I thought were great. You don't typically see parenting advice on a tech blog, but I suppose context is everything. Here are their 5 lessons for parents.
- Technology no longer has boundaries.
- Know when to cut it off.
- Know the difference between preference and addiction.
- Focus on technology that truly connects us to our kids.
- Model the balance
Check out the full list and descriptions.What do you think? Did the author pretty much nail it? Or did she miss something?