Techie Kids?

Because this is the kind of thing that seemed impossibly far in the future when my older boys were little, I just have to share this with you. A couple weeks ago, when we had that one particular day of unending snow, I sent the two big boys out to shovel five times over the course of the day. Five times they had to get into their snow gear; five times they had to get out of it again and hang it up to dry. I could never have imagined getting children into and out of snow gear five times when they were little—I would have rather had us buried in snowy drifts until spring. But they’re 9 years old and 7 years old now, and they got their own selves into and out of their snow gear every time. Every time. I didn’t have to even think about it. And they kept our walks impeccably shoveled. I’m still marveling over it. That’s all I have to say about that though, because what I really have on my mind this month is technology. I collected my boys’ letters to Santa a few weeks before Christmas so I could pass them on to the man himself, and couldn’t help but notice that one of them had asked for an iPad. I was pretty sure Santa wouldn’t think an iPad was an appropriate present, both because of the boy’s age and the cost, but it required yet another reassessment of our approach to technology in our house. When I think about how fast and wide technology has grown since I sent my first email as a freshman in college 17 years ago, it blows my mind. Just the year before, I’d typed all my high school papers and college essays on an electric typewriter, which I thought was pretty fancy. I look at myself now, and how my daily sanity sometimes seems wrapped up in Facebook (oh, how I love keeping up with friends and family far and near on Facebook) and how I can’t see how I could do any professional writing or help out at the boys’ school in the ways I can from home without a computer and high-speed Internet. Never mind that it seems most of the correspondence from every single entity I need to stay connected to—school, for example—is either emailed or posted to websites, and I think that it really would be very difficult to get along without it all. Despite my love affair with the computer and the Internet and texting, I’m terrified of my boys getting into any of it. Like so many of you, I worry about the easy availability of inappropriate online content, hours of video game playing with mouths hanging open and vacant eyes, dirty pictures being texted to and from, cyber bullying and those horrible stories of kids killing themselves because of it, neglect of family, friends, faith, books, and outside play in favor of the lure of nonstop virtual entertainment. I get that some of what I listed above are the worst-case scenarios, the extreme examples, especially for the fact that my oldest is only 9 years old. But I worry just the same, since just yesterday my 9-year-old was step-dancing all over my insides, like this little baby is doing to me right now, and tomorrow he’ll be a teenager. Then there are my boys’ personalities—based on what I know of them so far, some of them seem more prone to all this stuff, the “cool” stuff that “everyone’s” doing, and so I worry. And I make rules like, “No computer! No video games!” But then, freaking out doesn’t seem quite right either. I’m a big fan of balance, and I know that a certain amount of technology is necessary for kids. I know they’re going to need to be familiar with it when they get to middle/junior/high school and college and the workforce. This year at the boys’ school I felt I had to ask the computer teacher if they were ill-prepared for things they needed to know in her classroom and in their own classrooms, where Smart Boards and iPads are used. I was so relieved when she assured me that she would teach them everything they needed to know, and that they were doing just fine. For now, I’m delighted to keep most of that at school, under the watchful eyes of the teachers. We do have some technology for the boys at home—we received a Wii system as a gift a couple years ago. I admit it’s been pretty great. We have strict rules about what days they can play and for how long and what games are OK, and it’s worked out well—they still read and pray and play outside and get their homework done and have real face-time relationships with the people in their lives. They still aren’t allowed to use the Internet, but my oldest plays solitaire sometimes on our computer (our only computer, which is in the kitchen and oriented so I can always see what is on the screen) and I have a portable word processor with no Internet capabilities that I use for my own writing, which the older boys have used for typing school papers. When they’re done it sends what they typed directly to a Word document on the computer via a USB cord. So far, these slow and gentle forays into the world of modern technology have been sufficient and appropriate for our family. Despite my peace about how we’ve navigated the whole technology thing so far, I admit that on Christmas morning, I was a little worried that when our boy discovered that Santa had brought him a (much less expensive) handheld electronic game player with only educational games on it (like chess and checkers) instead of the requested iPad, Christmas might be a little ruined for him. I have no patience for ingratitude or spoiling, but I also know how much the kids look forward to Christmas and I’d hate for the joy of the day to be overshadowed by disappointment. I needn’t have worried. My boy tore the paper off the gift and whooped with joy. “Yesses!” he shouted. “I got my iPad!” And here I thought he was more tech-savvy than me, who has never used an iPad. Disaster averted—for now—and how sweetly innocent is he? Happy New Year to you all! Kate Towne Sherwin is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) living in Saratoga Springs with her husband and their sons Thomas (9), Gabriel (7), John Dominic (5), Xavier (3), and Thaddeus (2); they expect their sixth baby in spring 2014. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..