Parenting 2.0
How I see conversations with my kids transpiring in the next 10-15 years.*
Me: Swee’Pea, where are you going tonight?
Swee’Pea: I’m going to see that band ByteMe that I found on MySpace.
Me: Who are you going with?
Swee’Pea: I’m going with the “We Love ByteMe” social group from Facebook.
Me: Okay, but I want you to BrightKite your location to Twitter every hour so I know you’re safe.
Swee’Pea: *Sigh* Okay.
Me: And no blaming the Fail Whale, you understand me? If you can’t Twitter me then you’d better Plurk me, okay?
Swee’Pea: But Dad! Plurking is so not cool.
Me: I don’t care. If I’m not satisfied where you are, young lady, I’ll have you post a camera phone pic to Flickr to prove where you are.
Swee’Pea: Jeez, Dad. You’re a pain sometimes.
Me: Well, I’m sorry but you have to be safe. And be careful who you hang out with. I don’t want to see any inappropriate videos surface on YouTube.
Swee’Pea: Fine. Anything else?
Me: Yeah. If all else fails, you can text me, call my cell or the land line.
Swee’Pea: [On her way out the door] Okay. Okay. Fine. I’m starting to wonder if you giving me my own cell phone was a good idea or not.
Me: [To myself, under my breath] Yeah, and maybe someday I’ll tell you about that GPS chip in your phone.
*Of course, there will be tools and online communities that we haven’t even dreamed of yet. And I will be considered a dinosaur no matter how long I’ve been blogging.
Footnote: Also, this post is tongue-in-cheek. I believe good-old-fashioned parenting vs. relying on technology is definitely the better way. But with the proliferation of technology, it is interesting to note all the extra tools we have at our disposal.
And eventually technology seeps into our lives whether we like it or not. I imagine that before the telephone became widespread parents couldn’t even have their kids “call when they get there.” Many of the ways of keeping track of your child might even seem second-nature in 10 years. We’ll certainly see.
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I don’t think you’re far off. Teenagers probably already try to fake where they are if they have to send pictures of themselves on their phones.
Not that we won’t trust our kids, but this a good argument for keeping up with technology.
Comment by Darren — August 14, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
Picture this:
“Take your vitamin”
“It doesn’t LOOK like a vitamin, mom”
“It is”
“Mom,it says Sony on it!”
“Just eat it!”
“What’s it going to do to me”
“Well, hopefully once you ingest it, it’ll embed itself in your intestines and allow me to GPS track your every movement.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, so take your damn vitamin!”
“Ok”
Comment by Anissa@Hope4Peyton — August 14, 2008 @ 5:42 pm
It’s scary to me that you’ve probably come up with a pretty accurate description of how things will be in the future. I honestly can’t decide if life would have been easier or more difficult if I had been equipped with a cell phone during my teen years. I remember racing to find a pay phone to check in with my parents before the dreaded “we’re coming looking for you” time.
Comment by Cynthia — August 14, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
This is great, I can so picture it…although with a few more, Dad your lames.
There is this commercial where a kid walks off, the woman pushes a remote control and is able to find the kid. I can’t quite figure it out. Nick thinks there is a chip in the kids neck, like we have in our dog.
Comment by Issa — August 14, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
Already stuff is totally crazy, isn’t it? Loved your post..I think you are right, it will be something like that. I need to catch my husband up though, he totally didn’t understand the whole twitter from my cell phone on vacation…he looked at me like I had 5 heads.
Comment by mp — August 15, 2008 @ 8:12 am
ten years?! no way you’ll still have a land line
ahaha.
GREAT post!
Comment by ali — August 15, 2008 @ 9:21 am
I thought you were going to lock her in a convent until she turns 30.
Comment by Deanna — August 15, 2008 @ 11:53 am
You are being featured on Five Star Friday:
http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2008/08/five-star-friday-edition-19.html
Comment by schmutzie — August 15, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
Ah, but the technology for chastity belts might be greatly improved as well.
Comment by above average joe — August 15, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
I got halfway through this and was thinking–wait, hes got toddlers.
I’m all for embedding the gps chip. Why would that be such a bad thing?
Comment by Ed (zoesdad) — August 17, 2008 @ 10:01 pm
No blaming the Fail Whale. Hahahaha
Comment by Miss — August 28, 2008 @ 11:35 am
I should have responded to this sooner, why go through all that when you could just say “You can go if TheMONK goes too.” Or, “You have to take baby sister or better yet baby brother.” Inbedding a chip though sounds good to me.
Comment by Grandmother — September 4, 2008 @ 3:21 pm