Day One Completed

I have survived the first day back, mainly by spending most lessons talking about the holidays :-)
Now to finish marking the Year 9 exams and I can start to think about this term.

The conference was riveting. So much so that I was able to mark the Year 8 exams whilst listening to the three, count them, three keynote speakers. And the people who introduced them. And the people who thanked them and gave them gifts. I swear some of the introductions were as long as the speeches.

Teachers really make the worst audiences. At one point as the speaker was going on and on and on about the kids of today I texted three of the other teachers in the auditorium...

"Do u kno what is wrong with the kids of 2day? Technology! That's what!"

Lame Arizaphale. Very lame. Shows how bored we were :-)

OK. Exams! Here I come!!!!!!

In Which I Totally Fail As A Youngster

A few nights ago the Baby Angel wanted me to book tickets online for a band we are going to see in October. Now I am not familiar with the band and in fact wasn't all that keen to see them but it's the BA's friend's birthdy and it was all she wanted for her birthday and I am such a soft hearted mum.

Aaaaanyway, I went online and typed in the name of the band with other keywords such as concert/gig/Adelaide.......nothing.

I typed it in words. I typed it with digits instead of words for the numbers. I typed a combination of both. Still nothing.

In desperation I called the BA.
"I can't find this b***** band anywhere BA! Is there some weird way to spell it? Come and see what I'm doing wrong."
"Show me what you've tried Mum."

303

three oh three

three 0 three

3 oh 3

"Oh der Mum" she exclaimed as she typed it in for me

3oh!3

..........................................I have no words.

Parental Instruction: Responding To Cries of Alarm

Just a quick note to parents.

When your irate child TEXTS you from school (during lessons I might add) to complain that their ipod has been confiscated, possibly until the end of term, do NOT immediately phone the school demanding an explanation. Instead reply in text that said child should not be using a phone during lessons, that she can tell you the story at home tonight over dinner and, should you find there to be any inequity, you will contact the school at your convenience the next day.

This may cost you a bit in text charges but reeaally!

The parent in question turned out to be quite reasonable when he phoned the school to find out what the story was. He also agreed that she had been doing the wrong thing and she would have to take the consequences BUT my problem was with his immediate response.

What message are we giving our teenagers when we respond to their ipod angst as if it were a life threatening situation?

What are we reinforcing about the use of phones in class?

Generation Y needs a healthy dose of 'reality check' as far as I am concerned. Life can go on without mp3 players and mobile phones.

"But we'll be raped!" shrieks one of my (more hysterical) Care Group members.

You will be raped anyway kid. Mobile phones do not deter rapists. Should you be confronted by an attacker, your phone is unlikely to get you assistance in enough time to prevent the attack. Nor will it help in a mugging where it is, most likely, the intended loot.

Also parents, if your school has laid down a policy of 'no phones/ipods' in class and after many day/week long confiscations has implemented an 'end of term' confiscation.....suck it up.

And please. Oh please. Do not simply go out and buy your kid another one :-(

The Facebook Farce

You know, I have secretly been thinking this for awhile..........

25 Things I Hate About Facebook

Not sure about the 'age limit' thing though! *sheesh*

In Which The Baby Angel Becomes a Registered, Card Carrying Phone Owner

Well, she is a teenager now after all.

Contrary to what some people believe, I have not 'given in to pressure' but rather the Baby Angel has taken control of her own destiny.

For some time now she has exhibited a complete lack of interest or understanding in anything fiscally related. She got pocket money for awhile when she was younger but never asked for it and showed no inclination to save for anything in particular. In truth I guess she had everything she wanted or needed.

When we moved into this house and finances became somewhat tight, the pocket money stopped and she didn't even miss it! Then recently there was a school excursion to the local Subway for lunch (I know, I know, don't start me on the validity of these kind of excursions) and she needed $5.00. I only had $10.00 in my purse and I handed it over reluctantly requesting that she 'bring me the change'. That night after school I asked for the change and was greeted by a sheepish look.

"Well, there's not very much..."
"What do you mean there's not very much? Lunch was supposed to cost $5.00; where's my change?"
"Well, I sort of spent it!"
"You spent it? On what??"
'Well, I bought a sub and a slushy and some cookies for my friends and I to share..."
"COOKIES???? That wasn't part of the deal!" (Mother now starting to steam)
"But I DID share them!!"
"I don't care whether you shared them or not! (Mother now on the boil) How much did they cost?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?" (Mother now evaporating rapidly into the atmosphere)
"I don't know. I just bought them. I'm sorry Mum."
"How could you not KNOW how much they cost? The prices are on the counter right in front of you....."

It was at this point that I realised my 12 year old daughter had no concept of money.

After a great deal of thought and consideration I came up with a plan. Pocket money was reinstated, with a book to keep track of it, and every week the BA would receive $5.00 for her purse and $5.00 for her school bank book. With the purse money she would be expected to buy treats such as popcorn and drinks at the movies or ice creams at the Mall which, up until this point, I had always funded. The amount we had decided upon was insufficient to expect her to buy clothes and toiletries but it was the beginning of learning that every expenditure has a consequence ie an empty purse.

Of course at Christmas she received some money from overseas and I suggested she bank some of this too, which she did. Before too long she had nearly $100.00 in the bank!!

After her recent trip to Sydney to see her Dad she came up with a plan. If she could save enough money to buy a phone she could also save her pocket money to buy credit! Would I be amenable to this idea?

I was. Firstly, she was about to turn 13 and inevitably her life will start to include trips to town with her friends; movies, that sort of thing. This would entail being out of contact with me or any other responsible adult and therefore a phone would be useful. Prior to this she has always been supervised, transported everywhere by myself or another adult or at someone else's house with access to a landline, thus, I reasoned, a phone was unnecessary. Now there will start to emerge a genuine need.

Secondly, the very fact that she had thought through her 'plan' and committed herself to carrying it out showed a growing maturity and sense of fiscal responsibility. We went to town and gathered literature on contracts and pre-paids, costs and features and she googled sites which reviewed different models.

And so, with the final injection of funds that came about through her birthday money from Grandad......we went to Marion to purchase her new Nokia flip top, 1.3 Mg pixel camera, built in FM radio - mobile phone!!!!!

There's a LOT to be said for delayed gratification. You have never seen such an excited and proud child. I'm pretty proud of her too. Now let's see how she handles the credit thing :-)

I Have Some Amazing Readers

For those of you who don't always read comments, may I encourage you to go here and see what these fine ladies had to say about their approaches to technology in their kids' lives (also Elisa but she doesn't have a blog....maybe she should!!!!????).

I am encouraged by the quality of response to this discussion! :-) but it would still be great to hear from a few dads. Fathers in the family are often great fans of the interactive simulation game; I guess it has replaced shooting cans off the fence or fishing as a father/son activity. What are the merits fathers?? Speak up!

A Letter From My Baby Sister: Also a Flaming Angel

On the back of my rant about letting children grow up too quickly, my youngest sister in the UK wrote me this email. I was v interested in what she had to say and she has graciously allowed me to quote it here.

Hi sis - just writing to say that I have been reading your blog recently and enjoying it. I Enjoyed and wholeheartedly agree with the article you talked about. We are battling against the mobile phone nagging already with G (aged nearly 9), as well as the Nintendo DS which they are both desperate for and which D and I refuse to get them (even with saved up money).

I get so annoyed that I am made to feel guilty because I don't want my child glued to a small, moving box even if it is for half an hour a day as my friends reassure me they limit theirs to. The kids don't need one and I don't see any benefit to one at all; it is yet another thing to numb the brain and encourage anti social behaviour.

A few cases in point: I went to pick up S (aged 5) from a friend's place the other day, to find them both poring over (separate) Nintendo DS games! Neither acknowledged me when I came in and, more importantly, neither was communicating with the other! The scary thing was the mother seemed genuinely pleased that they were having such a nice time and "had been playing with the DS-s almost the whole time!!! I forced a smile and said "how nice" but I was really thinking "NO!!" - I want him to be playing!

The other hideous Nintendo story took place a few weeks ago when we went out for a curry with a number of other families. You can imagine my horror when 4 out of the 6 children were handed their Nintendo DS-s and promptly became engrossed in them, stifling all conversation and experience of "eating out". The worst thing was that our two suddenly became ostracised because they didn't have them!! Fortunately our friends E and M turned up at this point and were Nintendo free too. Apparently my other friend tells me this is a common occurence with this group of friends - it makes me shiver!!

Now I know my refusal to let them have these awful things might seem over the top but my main resentment is that I am made to feel so old fashioned and unreasonable by other parents. A lot of them claim to hate the things but don't have the backbone not to get them!! They are just perpetuating the problem as far as I can see.

Now that rant is over I will point you in the direction of an article I read recently (sorry to show off but I did manage to find the link!) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2008/02/16/faidle116.xml

I enjoyed this article and wholeheartedly agreed with it even if it is written by someone whose lifestyle obviously supports letting his kids have the freedom he suggests. It is a bit more difficult with a postage stamp sized garden on the outskirts of Leeds ! Yes, I know G does a ridiculous number of extra curricular activities (contrary to what he is advocating) but I have long suspected it is all a bit OTT. Still a lot has to do with what I said before about our environment; it would be lovely to let her have a bit more freedom but with traffic as it is and a number of attempted abductions of children recently, a 10 and 12 year old in Birmingham not to mention the 9 year old who has recently gone missing whilst walking home from school, I just don't feel comfortable with it (yet)

There we go, after saying I didn't have time to respond to your blog I've got on a roll (this subject is very close to my heart and makes me sound about 80)

.....................................................................................................................................................................

So there you are. What do others think of these Nintendo DSs? I was particularly horrified by their use as glorified babysitters at a restaurant. How do children learn to be social if they cannot observe role models due to the virtual puppies and worm cities in their faces? (Yes, I know this because the Small Boy has a DS! Fortunately he is too disorganised to keep the battery charged properly and I for one am not encouraging the pastime by monitoring this behaviour!).

I think the DS has some use as a car toy but as it also encourages motion sickness, perhaps not. There is an interactive aspect to them. Small Boy and Neighbour Down The Road have DSs that talk to each other but as their literacy skills are not equivalent, one gets fed up with the game pretty quickly and out they rush to ride their bikes again (hooray).

Particularly I am interested in the aspect of other parents pressuring you into a purchase, perhaps to justify their own capitulation?

Do others out there find other parents putting the pressure on for you to conform? How do you deal with it if they do? Is there anyone who will speak in defence of the DS? (We like a balanced viewpoint here at The Flaming Sword! :-D)

Also, how do you feel about the idea of 'over organising' your child's play? I for one like the idea of balance. I favour about a 50/50 split of freeplay and organised activities but what proportion of the freeplay should be solo and how much in the form of organised 'playdates'??

Thanks Sis for getting the thought processes operating again after a depressing week! :-D

Image credit

In The 'Anything But Pink' Corner We Have........

Come on you lot.......put up your dukes....surely there's SOMETHING you disagree with????
I almost thought KT was going to take me on re: mobile phones but I re-read her comment

"The mobile phone thing? a phone doesn't have to have service for it to be able to dial 911. Why do the kids need to be able to call you? That's not safety - that's convenience. for the parents. "

and realised she was on my side.

For those of you who may be lurking and secretly thinking, "Yes, but I need to know where Johnny is and at least with a phone I can find out." or "At least he or she can call me if they are stranded somewhere." or "but I don't like Susie being alone on the bus with all those strangers..." or "if I'm running late I can let Betty know.." or "if Sammy is worried he can call me for reassurance...........>:-("

Come on!!! Get out of the shadows! I'll take you!!! I've got an answer for ALL of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My first point of reference was the shocking murder of two little girls in the UK in 2002. What was it that lead the police to their killer? A mobile phone. Did it prevent those girls from being murdered? No.

I am quite interested actually in what the statistics are for 'near misses' and actual murders that involve mobile phones. Maybe we just don't hear of the near misses? Certainly in many highly publicised cases there have been mobile phones which did nothing to assist the victims in getting out of the situation. A mobile phone in itself will NOT keep your child safe.

As for finding out where your kids are......well I'm sorry, but at the ages I am considering (7-14), you should KNOW where they are and there should be a responsible adult in charge of supervision and that adult should be someone you know and trust. (ie go and MEET the parents of the kids your child socialises with). If they are older than 14....and you want to 'check up' on them...you can guarantee they will tell you anything you want to hear on the phone. Or better still, screen their calls and refuse to answer. "Oh, my battery must have been flat....I was out of range....there was no network......" puhlease! Look, either you trust them or you don't. Don't rely on the phone.

"Susie alone on the bus with strangers"? "If Sammy is worried."? Who is need of reassurance here? At some point (and I trust the parents will have made a decision about this based on their child's life skills, confidence and general common sense), with preparation, your children must go out INTO THE WORLD. You did. You don't need to ring them every five minutes to check if they're breathing.

"If I'm running late": where is your child waiting? At school? They have phones. At sport? The coach has a phone. At another child's house? Hello.....landlines. At the Mall.......if they are of an appropriate age to be at the Mall on their own they are old enough to wait the extra ten minutes.

The bottom line for me is that giving a child a mobile phone for safety is an 'adult' justification for giving in to the pressure from children to have what everyone else has. What do they really want a phone for at that age? Let me share a few, if not 'horror' then at least 'grimace' stories.

My friends gave their 9 and a half year old an old phone with credit. During a visit, we adults went out and the kids had a sleep over at a mutual friends' house. At about 10pm, at the dinner party, Dad received a call from daughter who couldn't get to sleep as she was used to dad laying down with her as she drifted off. To our complete astonishment dad left the party and trooped off to oblige. His wife was furious.

Aside from the issues of attachment of both father and daughter, my greatest concern was for the friends who were babysitting. On checking later, it appeared that dad had appeared on the doorstep saying Kitty was upset and needed help to go to sleep. The friends were mortified! She had not mentioned to them that she was upset. As far as they knew the two kids were upstairs chatting and 'going to sleep' as girls do at a sleepover. Had they known she was unsettled they would have attended to her and if all else failed...phoned dad. They felt their credibility and reliability had been undermined.

Another example occurred at a birthday party the BabyAngel had in 2006. Her 6 best friends were altogether for a sleepover when we discovered them using their mobile friends to send text messages. When challenged as to the need for sending messages at a party they assured us that they were texting friends. "But all your best friends are here ," I argued. No response. I ended up insisting that they turn their phones off. I met calls of "But what if we want to call our parents?" with "Tell me and I will phone them on the landline."

My belief is that they were texting their second best friends to taunt them over not being at the party. Not in so many words perhaps.....but making it clear that they were altogether and the other girls were not. The Baby Angel was sheepish when I suggested this after the event. I think she got the message.

Our neighbour's daughter regularly used her phone on the way to school in my car. She was texting her friend at school to tell her how far away she was. They often exchanged 3 texts (ie 5-6 in total) in a 20 minute trip. I am glad I was not paying the bill. Even the Baby Angel rolled her eyes.

These examples illustrate the two main reasons kids want phones. The first is to have the immediate on-call reassurance of mum and dad about a range of events in every day life. The second is to impress friends. This is the much more sinister of the two. Unchecked it can lead to cyber bullying and real on-going unhappiness for many kids.

The poor Baby Angel does not have a mobile phone and will not for at least another 18 months. I will not subsidise technological one-upmanship and I will continue to a) supervise my daughter and her contacts and b) encourage independence in generally safe, everyday situations. (the bus...a sleepover....netball training). I do not see why I should pay good money for her to have what is at best a luxury and at worst an instrument of gossip, maliciousness and bullying.

You may ask why I put the 18 month time frame on things? Well by then, at 14, I expect she will be going to the pictures or ice skating etc with friends. There may then be a convenience aspect re transport etc. By then I hope she will have got over the need to use the thing for the sake of it. She will also be able to work and therefore pay her own bills.

I urge all like minded people to encourage friends etc who are considering the early purchase of phones to really analyse WHY they are providing them. When my father and I had this conversation a few months ago...it boiled down to the fact that 'she wanted one'. That is not good enough. I want world peace and a million dollars.....but I don't think dad is likely to get it for me.