The optimistic parent's guide to kids and texting
How to raise smart, safe texters, and strengthen your relationship with your kids at the same time
It seems like every time I tune in to the afternoon radio show on my drive home from work, some parent is calling about a child in trouble for texting. Sometimes, the calls are innocuous — “Help! my kids are texting at the table!” Other times, they are frighteningly serious — “Help! My kid is sexting.”
Egad. Our mothers never had to deal with this stuff. So what do we do?
As scary as it all seems, there is a lot of hope. What I’ve discovered, by going to real-life, non-radio-show-calling-in moms and experts, is that texting can be a valuable parenting tool, and with the right guidance our kids can use it productively. Before we explore the good side of texting, though, there are important issues and strategies we need to know to equip ourselves to raise smart texters.
Knowledge is power
Lynn Hargrove, director of consumer solutions for computer security firm Symantec Canada, says parents need to know what their child’s phone does. Does it take pictures? What are the apps? Is there unlimited texting? Do the texts post to other social networks, like Facebook?
The days of simply keeping the computer in the living room are over. These days kids carry the computer in their pockets. As Hargrove insists, “Cellphones are going to outpace PCs in the next couple of years.”
Parent power plan Know what your child’s phone does, decide which apps or social networks you deem appropriate for your child’s age, needs and maturity level, and install mobile security software. Also, talk to your phone company if your child goes a little overboard on texting when she or he first gets a phone and your bill comes in a little (or a lot) high. They typically reduce or eliminate the cost — just this once — because it happens all the time!
To spy, or not to spy?
Toronto photographer and mom of two, Shelagh Howard, notes, “kids don’t telephone anymore. They text. When we grew up, we talked on the house phone, and parents could often check in on what we were talking about. So much goes on right under your roof and you don’t even know it.”
The radio talk show host I listen to insists parents install spyware and spy on their children’s virtual lives. But most of the parents I spoke to refuse to do that. Many say they randomly check their children’s texts (with the knowledge that kids will delete their texts), and that they are open about doing so with their children.
And experts agree with their choices. “Spying is an invasion of privacy regardless of the age of the person,” says parenting author and psychotherapist Alyson Schafer. “It implies deceit and it will create distance in any human relationship. We have to prove to our kids that we have their backs, and not act like the police officers of their lives.”
Parent power plan If you feel anxious about your child’s texting life, talk about it. Schafer suggests saying something like, “I am worried about what I hear people texting about and I want to make sure as my job as parent that this is not happening — so a condition of having a phone with texting is that I check it periodically.” And be proactive. “Taking away the phone if I feel things are getting out of control is important,” says Howard, “because she obviously needs to talk and reground before I’m comfortable letting her start texting again.” And Schafer and Howard both use examples in the media to discuss serious issues like bullying and sexting with their kids. We’re looking at you, Brett Favre and Tiger Woods.
Read on for the rules of engagement and to learn what's GOOD about kids' texting >
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