WriteRunRead Blog

A couple of years ago, I raised the topic of whether parents should be watching, monitoring, surveilling what their kids do online.  This includes their "AIM" (or any instant messenger chat) or "iChat" communications with friends, acquaintances and family members. The responses were varied and at that point I hadn't really digested all of the scenarios.  Now that my kids are getting older and technology is continuing to evolve more rapidly than I'd like, I'm wondering how parents feel about keeping an eye on their kids' chats. Part of me feels like it's an invasion of their privacy - their personal conversations are just that: personal.  One other part of me wants to ensure that they are safe and using good judgment and decorum while texting, chatting, emailing, etc.  While yet another part of me wants to be able to trust them and for them to know that I do. I know a large part of this equation concerns their age, maturity, sensibility and ...

One of the goals of my local library is to foster a lifelong love of learning.  While it's a lovely alliteration, it's also a worthy aspiration.  It's a concept that we should teach our children to embrace. Yesterday, while my 10 year-old daughter and I were together in the car, I taught her something new or advised her about something she didn't know about already.  Okay, so that sort of thing happens often, by virtue of her age and mine (!), and me being the parent and all.  At that moment I told her how much I love teaching her new things.  And she said, "Well, you're the mom, you should be teaching me things." And she was right.  But I quickly added, "You know, I've also learned so much from you -- you've taught me more than you'll ever know." She seemed to be very surprised by that sentiment.  But then she sort of nodded, giving it some more thought. You just never know what another person takes away from a conversation. ...