Sometimes, I think, I am the not-fun mom. Sometimes, I think, I am the over-analyzer. These thoughts tend to sneak up on me, most often following a funny look from another mom. It’s the look that says, “Really? Huh. Why would you worry about that?” No Wii. No X-Box. Not even TiVo! She doesn’t say it, of course. At least, not usually. No, I am here to attest that, every so often, manners still win out.
Don’t misunderstand–my kids have plenty of fun. We tube, we ski, we play charades, for goodness sakes. But from the beginning I have been wary of media’s influence on my kids. The numbers are out there, and if you don’t believe the numbers, take a look around the world, your town, your children’s schools. One of the reasons I’m wary about all of this so-called “education reform” is that it’s not just the schools that are responsible for educating our kids. I’m a firm advocate that parents are first, first, first–we are the front line for our kids and we decide, from a very early age, how they’re going to spend their time. It’s the old garbage-in, garbage-out theory. Firm believer.
Does this mean I think kids who play games on the Wii every week are bound for social and academic failure? Please. Come on. Give me a smidge more credit than that. The top kid in my son’s class is a video-game stud, so no, I don’t think that in the least. Do I think there are better things my kids could do with their time? You bet I do. Wanna argue? Bring it on. I’m their mom, and for them, for now, I decide. I’ve argued it before. Happy to do it again.
With this background, please know that I am all for moderation. If you own these games and use them when the whim hits, more power to you. It’s your family, see? I’m all for each of us deciding what works best. And hey, invite us over. We love the Wii. My 6-year old can beat me at Wii tennis every time, which is a tad embarrassing, but, you know, he’s in lessons so he definitely has an advantage. We’re not Luddites. We have friends. We have family. They have stuff. We have plenty of opportunities to jump in on the technological fun.
We even joined in, a bit, earlier this year, when we got our oldest son a cell phone. Yes, yes, I know. Everyone is stunned. I even got a phone call from one friend who didn’t believe it when her son came home with the news. But here’s the thing: I don’t want ‘no’ to be my knee-jerk reaction to my kids. When I say ‘no’ to the X-Box, I have a reason. I have more than one. I have reasons I feel so strongly about that I’m not the least bit concerned about ‘what everyone else’ has or does. I don’t feel this way about the cell phone. At this point, it’s simply a social tool. I’m not sure he’s even talked on it, except with me. Mostly he uses it for texting that looks something like this:
‘Sup?
Nothin.
Kay.
C Ya.
Over and over again. Occasionally there’s more, like the loquacious, “‘What’s up lil man,” but that’s pretty rare. These will be men of few words.
The one concern I have about texting is the growing practice of sexting. You know what this is, right? Sexting is the high-school girlfriend/boyfriend practice of e-mailing nude or sexually explicit photos of one another to one another. Nice, huh?
As much as I would prefer to stick my head waaaayyyy down in the sand and forget I ever heard about this practice, I can’t. I know it seems like eons ago, but I was a teenager. I had a boyfriend. I can see how this happens in the tiny little world of love teenagers create for themselves. But, like the WORLD WIDE web, a photo on a phone is anything but private. An argument, some angry words, a couple of clicks, and it’s the photo seen ’round the school. High school was hard enough. Thinking about this kind of pressure makes me cringe.
When we hear stories about sexting, I think it’s natural for moms to think, “Well, she shouldn’t have sent the photo in the first place,” or “He should have used better judgement.” That’s easy for us to say. We’re not teenagers in love. They’re not our kids. She shouldn’t have and he should have, but this is what’s happening. Twenty percent (20%!) of teens say they’ve sent or posted nude pictures or videos of themselves. And they’re the frontrunners. How high will this number grow in the years until our kids reach high school? This worries me, the not-fun, over-analytical mom.
Do my kids have good judgement? Sure, for kids. Will they make mistakes? Yep, still human, last I checked. It’s the consequences of these mistakes that concerns me. I made so many mistakes as a kid that I’m pretty sure my mom stopped counting somewhere along the way. The fact that she didn’t set me out at the curb with a “For Sale, Cheap” sign is a sure testament to her motherly love. But there were no cell phones. No digital photos. No Internet. My consequences were smaller. More personal. More contained. And then I moved on.
For kids today, it’s not so easy. Last week, I watched an incredibly heartbreaking MSNBC clip. In it, Matt Lauer interviews Cythia Logan, mom of Jesse Logan.
Eight months ago, Jesse, a high school senior in Ohio, took her own life. As a parent, I can’t imagine a greater horror than walking into my child’s bedroom and finding her hanging in her closet. I can’t imagine the pain, I can’t imagine the anguish. I can’t imagine going forward.
Jesse had been dating a boy, and like most teenagers today, they both had cell phones. She took a nude photo of herself and sent it to his phone. Later, after their break-up, he forwarded the photo, leading to such a humiliating and painful trial for Jesse that she eventually ended her own life.
After the picture was forwarded, she tried to help others. A disguised Jesse gave an interview to a Cincinnati TV station, warning other kids about the dangers of sexting, and pleading, “I just want to make sure than no one else will ever have to go through this again.”
In the Today Show clip on MSNBC, Dr. Mark Reinecke comments on the practice of teenage sexting by saying,
“In the moment, it’s, to a teenager, just fine. It’s when it goes to the whole school or to the employer or to the college admissions office; that’s when the trouble….and that’s what they’re not thinking about.”
As photos of a smiling, happy Jesse roll, her mom, Cynthia, describes Jesse before the whole sexting incident. Her daughter “was vivacious, she was fun, she was artistic, she was compassionate, she was a good kid.”
If this watching this clip doesn’t make you break down and cry, I don’t know what will. But I think we should watch it. I think every parent with a child and a cell phone needs to get our heads out of the sand and into our kids lives. I’m not naive enough to believe that we can protect our kids from all of the bad things that can happen. But I am a proponent of doing what we can: educating ourselves, educating our kids, and watching out for each other.
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photo credit: eron_gpsf
* Brio or Thomas trains