How many times on your parenting journey have you said, “I’ll never….”? I have many times. A few of my favorites have been, “I’ll never let TV babysit my kids.” Then all you want is a moment to get some cleaning done, read a book, or maybe just breathe, and the next thing you know your kids are staring at the TV. Another I swore I would never do was let my kids sleep in my bed. This was typically done while speaking in judgment about others. Then we adopted a daughter who because of her childhood trauma had night terrors and needed her daddy so guess what? She was sleeping in our bed.
Thankfully most of these parenting shifts or surprises are innocent, come at little costs, and are just a matter of us doing what is best for our kids because we just had no idea what road we would end up heading down as a parent. But if we are not careful, there are certain, “I’ll never….” statements that can lead us to not prepare for reality and in turn create blindspots for us as parents that can leave us unprepared when reality hits.
I will give you an example. One of my, “I never will…” statements was to let my kids have a cell phone while they are living in my house. The reasons I would want to make this statement are obvious. We can all see the negative effects mobile devices are having on kids. However, our unique situation made this an actual possibility for our home. I work at my kids’ school, my wife works for our church, and they are never anywhere where some adult cannot text us. A blessing I know. What happened though was as they got older they did not want to go to work with me during the summer and honestly were old enough to stay by themselves. But we do not have a landline, so they do not have a way to contact me if an emergency arises. Also, as our kids have grown there are Sports You and Remind groups that coaches and sponsors want kids to be a part of for communication. Finally, we were finding that there were group projects where students were messaging each other directly while we were waiting for their parents to reach out to us. So we made the decision for our kids to have iPads so they could download the messaging apps for school, message friends, and message family. But because I had mentally determined this would never be necessary I started out behind the eight ball and have been playing catchup on what controls are available via iOS or otherwise and what other tools are available. My life is pretty much technology so figuring it out has not been too bad. But many of you are not immersed the way I am in technology. Regardless of your technology expertise, I think it might be important for all of us to never say never and instead start thinking about what we will do if.
- Start thinking about what you will do if/when your kid gets technology. Keep up with monitoring and filtering tools, research on negative effects of technology, and find places to learn about what kids are using to get around technology boundaries. Also, start to plan for what boundaries you want to set and what situations might cause you to need to have exceptions for those boundaries. It might even be good to look for opportunities to talk to your kids about these boundaries. For example, they are talking about friends with phones and you start to plant the seeds of, “Well, if you ever get ________, we will _________.”
- If/when your students get technology, do not assume your child will never do anything bad. I share this because I often here, “I trust my kids and they never would __________.” You might be right. The issue is they might not but the algorithm would. Also, there are just so many dangers that it is naive for us to not be proactive regardless of how good our kids are. Not only are algorithms designed to do whatever is necessary to get kids addicted, Gaming systems now have Internet browsers. So think through all the ways your kids could get to inappropriate content or connect with others that might not have their best interest at heart or put them in danger and then determine what you need to do. This could include but is not limited to blocking those tools, monitoring them, or explaining to your kids why they are still there(maybe you cannot delete it) but what your expectations are, what the dangers are, how you will know what they are doing, and what the consequences will be.
- Build a community. This technology journey is hard. Our kids got iPads and an Xbox for Christmas(they have some very loving grandparents). Now I am constantly noticing new things I need to consider monitoring and controlling and thinking through how they could possibly be exposed to things they should not or exploit loopholes. Thankfully, they are not actively trying to right now but I know one exposure and they would be and I know a lot of kids that are. So because this is so challenging and the risks are so great, we must not do this alone. You need to join with other parents to come to agreements and understandings about technology boundaries and expectations you have and maybe even agree together about ages you want your kids’ friend group to have technology of certain kinds. You could even partener together and say you are as a group going to keep your kids off technology. You should also have friends in your community who have kids older than yours. This way you can learn some of the mistakes they made and what also made them successful.
We do not know how the world will continue to change or what situations we might find ourselves in. So while we can and should make difficult decisions to set clear boundaries about technology our kids will not have access to, we also need to prepare for the realities that some of those decisions may have to change and be prepared for how we will protect and educate our kids in the process.