Do you hear the chitter-chatter of little voices. "May I call a friend to come to play?" "May I use the phone? I need to ask about a homework assignment." "Let me call Grandma to tell her about my report card!"
Do your children have cell phones? If they do and they're modern kids, they text more than talk. The banter above happens very rarely in today's homes. A mother of one of my daughter's classmates exclaimed in frustration over her 14-year olds inability to figure out how to leave a phone message on an answering machine ... she felt ill-equipped and too embarrassed to do so. The mother wrote her a script to get her through the fearsome event!
The child is an honor student, reading at college level. But she's missing a link in communication.
Children (including teens here) text more than we realize, both in number of messages and in content. Used in secret, used independently, used without our knowledge, cell phones in "silent mode" vibrate in pockets all over the globe and allow kids to connect when the adults around them go about their business, ignorant of the activity. Kids have codes to alert each other that an adult is in the room, they use ring tones at higher pitches on low volume so that older people can't hear the alerts pinging.
No more paper folded into tiny, tight football shapes for clever, discreet passing across desktops or in the hallways at school. Kids pass notes via the ether, send photographs without consideration for content, or for the fact that the pictures and words can travel endlessly, cell phone to cell phone and even onto the Internet for wider distribution. Forever. Many adults have trouble with this concept, too.
Kids have unlimited talk and text because adults can't seem to keep the usage down to a minimum and don't want to pay by the minute or by the text. Providers know how to draw in the customers with bundling and family plans. "Family" is an operative, psychologically sensitive word in the marketplace and it works. Many children don't have limits on the time they spend either online via Smart Phone or in the number of texts they send, or when and where they may use their technological devices. They communicate at all hours, in all venues, and even when societal rules tell them they shouldn't (church, classroom, at the dinner table, in the middle of a social event).
Kids -- and people in general -- wouldn't pick up a phone to verbally share the information they're texting. They wouldn't pick up a book to find out the information they "Google" or Bing". How many of us would interrupt in the middle of a social gathering to say, "Excuse me. I'm going to use the house phone for a minute." Would anyone really interrupt a dinner conversation to say, "Let me look that one up in the encyclopedia ..." Would you? No. But many of us text it and surf for it. Seems less invasive, huh?
How does this differ from your early years of learning about communication? Talking on the phone meant you were tethered to a wall with a cord that stretched only so far, possibly in a central location in the home, and within earshot of family. You had rules, time limits, calling zones to consider, thought to others wanting to use the phone, and thought to the importance of making the call at all. Many families didn't take calls after certain hours, and never during dinner time. We did not have answering machines, and we learned a sensible use of time and importance in making any calls at all.
The phone habits of our children don't provide these parameters, or at the least, very many that resemble them.
Today's children have grown up in an era of secrecy and self-direction against the grain of familial preference. Parents feel their hands are tied by invisible cord -- with a known inability to corral their kids in their communication pursuits. Cell phones allow for hidden conversation, deceit, learned habits from unknown sources, and changes in attitudes that we would never support as parents. How much do you know about your child's cell phone habits? Records. Sure. You can check them, but how do you manage the behavior that builds those records? Do you know who they have on their Contact Lists, whom they contact most often, what types of information they send and receive? You may have an angelic child who uses her phone only when necessary? I do. Yet the information that comes to her via the device is out of my control and most likely, without my knowledge.
Do we, as parents, truly understand the freedom we give our children just by providing them a cell phone? When we provide Internet access, we provide them the world. In view of faith, what amount of good does providing our children with the world ... without limits ... do for them? The family computer resides in plain sight, but the cell phone lives on their hips, ushering in parts of life we may not know or expect.
"And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"
Mark 8:36
From before their birth we protected them by eating right, getting medical care, staying fit, preparing all the needs for their arrival to nurture them without room for error. We boiled their pacifiers when they fell to the floor. We made sure the formula or baby food was the proper temperature. We provided healthy foods and we limited their television viewing from toddlerhood onward, and what they did see helped them learn, not just entertain. We read to them, encouraged their creativity in art and song. We enrolled them in classes for enjoyment and to grow their natural talents, checked their homework, and packed healthy lunches.
And then we bought them cell phones and found out what "lack of control" and "independence" really means.
Some parents, and my husband and I belong to this group, held off on the cell phone purchase for much longer than most. Our daughter received her phone 2 months ago, and probably really was the last kid in her class to get one (she claims this is true). The longer we held out and observed her peers and the general population -- and ourselves -- the more we wanted to avoid the reality that this phone would introduce: more independence and participation in the outside world than we would allow in a physical, observable, tactile existence. We are not overprotective parents, but we do believe that children need boundaries and strong guidance, rather than direction in navigating GPS.
Do we want our children to Stumble Upon it when we have avoided skinned knees and trips on the curbs all their lives? Do we feel that taking a chance in Tumblr fits our moral compass? Do they really need to Pin It? Must they Find it on Facebook? Does it really enhance their experience to compete in Four Square online rather than a face-to-face game of the real thing on the playground?
Does the good outweigh the bad? When did we lose the spirit and the need to teach morals and ethics to our children, not only in word but in deed? When did we leave so much to them, a world full of unchecked information, when in a few years we will want to carefully guide their practice sessions in an automobile and make sure they have excellent control before allowing them to drive alone?
Cell phones are not bad. The Internet has tremendous usefulness to us. They are tools that have amazingly good uses. What self-control, limits and lines to we put on that usefulness, and how do we teach it and model it? How do we direct it for our children's benefit? How do we go about protecting them and guiding them and providing the best examples and experiences for them to take into their futures with these devices available for their use ... at their discretion?
They can't look up when they're so drawn to looking down, into the screens of their phones. Can they feel the Holy Spirit's guidance more strongly than the vibration of the phone in the pocket?
What do you think?
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