Adventure in Parenting – Texting and Driving

If you are looking for some background and resources for your talk with your teen driver about the fact that texting and driving is an absolute “no-no,” take a look at ‘Yo, I’m Driving. I’ll Text You When It’s Safe’ on the Motherlode blog site. It outlines one mother’s experiences and the comments section outlines many others. While the blog’s purpose is to remind parents that there are resources like the AT&T “It Can Wait” campaign that can help scare kids and adults into not texting and driving – and that it is worth trying that route – the comments section reminds us that the best way to help your teen recognize that texting really CAN WAIT, is for parents to model that behavior themselves. Parents modeling positive behaviors when it comes to all kinds of technology is definitely a recurring theme when trying to advise parents on so many technology misuse issues, because it is so easy to slip. How do you remind yourself to use technology wisely?

Well Done Parents Guide from 02

If you are looking for another well done general guide to digital safety take a look at this British version. There are special sections on everything from cell phones to how to stop nuisance and bullying calls and texts and how to report them. Of particular interest and a bit different is the section on “Paying for Extras.” This material covers how to teach your child about the small print before they vote for a contest or download a ringtone, or about finding they need to spend money on a game to play it.

Mutual Driving Pledge

Have you been looking for some common ground to start a discussion about texting and driving with a teen or even your spouse? If so, take a look at Toyota’s Mutual Driving Agreement.  I really like that BOTH parties – parent and teen – have to sign the agreement that covers general safety, safety belts, being under the influence, and distractions. Safety should be a partnership and that’s what this agreement focuses on.

Texting while Parenting

We have taken up the topic of parenting and smart phones and texting a myriad of times in this blog, but with doctors recently speaking out on the subject, worried that kids may be in danger as a result, the topic rises again. Bottom line: You know when you shouldn’t be texting or talking. Not while driving, not while your kids are swimming or doing anything else dangerous, not during meals, and not so much that your kids feel neglected. One thing research has shown is that smartphone users' interpretation of how long they're staring at their phones instead of their kids is grossly underestimated. It might feel like 20 seconds, but really three minutes have passed -- long enough for younger kids to get into trouble and for older kids to feel neglected.

Ways for Parents and Teachers to Use Texting Effectively

If you and your school are looking for better ways to communicate with parents using cellphones, take a look at this blog post from Lisa Nielsen. She suggest several free and easy-to-use resources including a mass-texting service called Remind101 that allows for safe, one-way communication for reminders and announcements and relays information to parents. Other recommended tools include ClassPager, which allows parents to respond to polls and questions using their own devices, and Poll Everywhere, which gives parents a chance to relay their opinions.

Txtspeak – Perhaps Being Bilingual is Good for Your Brain

As soon as texting arrived on the scene, people began bemoaning the fact that kids were crossing the line and mixing the way they communicate informally with each other with the formal language necessary in most academic and business settings. But, Columbia linguistics professor John McWhorter has a different interpretation. “A whole new language has developed among our young people doing something as mundane as batting around when they’re using their little devices,” he said in a talk at the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., recently.

The trick is realizing that there’s a difference between written language and spoken language, according to McWhorter. “Texting is fingered speech. Now, we can write the way we talk,” he said. And, being “bilingual”, McWhorter reminded his audience, is good for your brain.

Remind101

A new smartphone app called Remind101 lets teachers send one-way text messages to students and parents without teachers being able to see parents’ and students’ phone numbers or vice versa. It serves as a way to use texting without some of the privacy concerns that often stand in the way. Tell the folks at your children’s school about it.

Washington Becomes “Twitterpated”

Twitter says that all U.S. senators and 90% of House members have accounts on the network, compared with 44% of the Senate and 35% of the House in 2011. Among state legislatures, 29 states have all their lawmakers on Twitter, and all states have at least 70% participating. We can only hope it opens up lines of communication in Washington and elsewhere, as well. Wouldn’t it be great if they could solve some of the nation’s problems in 140 characters or less?

Tiptoeing Around – The Parent Teacher Digital Relationship

An article focusing on the perils and pitfalls of the parent teacher relationship appeared recently in the Times and much of it focuses on the power and limitations of the electronic communication. The pros of using such communication are rather obvious – they are timely and can be asynchronous accommodating both the teacher and parent’s schedule.  Most of the drawbacks, of course, center around  miscommunication including texts and emails sent off in anger that escalate quickly into something that might have settled quickly face to face or on the phone. Bottom line – the best advice is to use email sparingly in any kind of dispute.

Interacting with 150 of Your Closest Friends

Two recent and, at first glance, seemingly unrelated articles reveal some interesting things about social networking. There has been a lot of interest lately on the part of social networks in the work of psychologist Robin Dunbar who asserted, based on his studies done just prior to the dawn of intense social networking, that the human brain is hardwired to cope with social groups of about 150 people. Some networks, such as Path, embrace Dunbar's work and limit their users' contacts accordingly; others, such as Facebook, see such social limits as challenges to be overcome. But perhaps Facebook should be paying more attention (or, perhaps, they are). In another recent article, researchers have strongly suggested that the people Facebook users interact with most tend to be their closest real-world friends. The studies authors say that the findings contradict the commonly held truism that people use Facebook to stay in touch with those with whom they would otherwise lose touch. They say that this just indicates that Facebook is just another space where our social lives take place. Further, they say this is a reminder that if Facebook (or another social network) is a space where our friendships occur and develop, we need to think about what the contours and limitations of that space do to us.