Technology in the hands of our children has never been a greater challenge. The internet, Facebook, iPods, pictures and texting on cell phones, these are the ways kids communicate today. They have become a central and, arguably, indispensible part of their lives. It allows them a private life that most of us know very little about.

The key to how they manage this privacy is our “connection” to them. How closely do we stay in touch with our kids and pay attention to what they’re doing and when and with whom? And how often do we talk to our children…and really listen to them? If they trust us and know that we will be there for them, they’re more likely to adhere to the ethics of our family, the standards that are never more important than when parents are not around. If we talk openly about what we believe in, what we stand for, before long those values will become their own.

The challenge for parents is that our kids have a whole new set of communication tools and many of these young people don’t fully understand that the old rules apply, even here, even in the brave new world of social networking and text messaging. We actually need to teach them, literally and plainly explain to them how ethics apply to these tools. “If you wouldn’t wear it in front of your grandmother, don’t wear it to school or to the dance. If you wouldn’t do it in the middle of a packed football stadium, don’t do it anywhere someone has a camera or a cell phone. If you don’t want that picture on the front page of the newspaper, don’t send it on your cell phone.”

Kids just don’t think through the consequences. They don’t think, “If I send this picture out to Bobby, he might send it to some friends, who might send it to a hundred others and the next thing you know, it’s on a dozen Facebook sites and all over the internet, forever.” This just doesn’t occur to them; they don’t think that way because they don’t have the life experience that we do. We have to help them.

More: http://www.youtube.com/connectwithkids

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.