With smart phones and chrome books replacing jump ropes and wagons, parents are often lost in the technology universe that their kids eagerly use as a playground. Its ever morphing toys: Facebook, Twitter, Snap chat, Whats Ap,... all these cyber toys often leave parents scratching their heads. Parents quickly realize that the lessons before them are more complex than teaching their kids 'how to cross the street'.Adults are faced with teaching our youth to become media PIs, deconstructing the hidden messages from the overt stories. To top it off, we are also charged with helping our youth to cautiously use an everyday tool, the internet and the associated technology in all its forms with caution. How do you teach responsible use of such an innocuous and powerful object?
Kids need to learn how to become critical thinkers. We must remember that even mature and intelligent youth often developmentally lack the insight we have as adults. We must provide learning opportunities for them to learn to decode media messages. We must help them hone their abilities to not only use technology but the much needed skillset to responsibly navigate is vastness. Until that time, we must wade them into the cyber pool.
Two smart parent tech tips include:
- Learn the 'safety settings' for you child's technology. Set them with you own private security code. Graduate these to less restrictive settings as the child ages and shows more critical thinking skills.
- Tech Turn In: Set a time that all technology must be turned into you each night. This prohibits late night unmonitored wandering into uncharted territories.
Common sense media, Edutopia, and PBS kids.
Parents often see their kids as their 'little babies', naïve and free from sexuality. However, our kids have many faces, just as we do. Their sexual curiosity, their flirtatious nature, their sexual voice is often exercised in privacy with their friends as they develop social skills and a sense of self. Parents often are not privy to this other side of their children. They are sometimes blinded by a misguided idea that youth are sexually innocent and they somehow believe it is their duty to protect their kids from sexuality.
A more holistic and sexually healthy version recognizes that our children are sexual beings from birth. Our job, rather than protecting children from their inherent sexuality, is to shepherd their evolving sexuality, guide their journey as safely as possible, increase their sexual literacy, and minimize their sexual shame. Its an awesome and sometimes terrifying responsibility... being a sexuality teacher. But every parent is by default a sex ed teacher. It may be one of the most important parenting job roles. It is a job made more important by the bombardment of our children by hidden media messages and the tempting calls of a technology landscape that is often a new frontier for most parents. The good news is that as adults we don't have to become experts in these arenas, we just need to stay a dozen or so steps ahead of our children.
