I never got the chance to put up Part II of my last entry like I had hoped. Oh well. I've probably started and abandoned a dozen things on this blog. That's just how it goes. Something else came up last weekend that demanded my and S's attention, something every parent of our generation has to deal with sooner or later: inappropriate texting. Lil' S2 got a new Apple Watch recently, and he's at the age where most his friends have one also (or they have a phone), so he's on a bunch of fourth-grade group chats, and, well, let's just say he obviously did not realize that everything he said on them could be seen from S's iPad. I'm not even going to post what he actually said, because it's embarrassing, and because I don't want this blog entry to get flagged for inappropriate content, but suffice it to say, it's not stuff he learned from watching Bluey.
It's partially, maybe even largely, on S and I. We never explicitly went over texting rules and etiquette with him, and we were extremely lax in monitoring what he was consuming and parroting to all his little schoolmates. We only found about it because one of his friends ratted him out. That prompted us to deep-dive his text history, and it was... not great. Some of it was just superficially bad language, which I don't really give a shit* about. But there was some other stuff in there that was worse on a deeper level. He made fun of a kid in his class at one point and issued vague dis-track-type threats to everybody else at another point. After getting caught, he immediately melted down in tears and claimed he didn't even know what the things he was saying mean, and I believe him to a point, but only to a point. He certainly knew it was wrong.
*See what I did there?
S and I knew we had to nip this thing in the bud, so nip we did. We laid into him pretty good. We revoked his texting privileges indefinitely. (He's now only allowed to text about logistical things.) We took away his iPad and PlayStation for a week, and we blocked YouTube permanently on his devices. So as to not just be punitive, we also tried to have a nonconfrontational heart-to-heart with him to underscore the importance of being smart about what you post online. It lives on forever and everybody can see it.* I think (pray) this message got through to him, and hopefully throwing down the gauntlet on this early will pay dividends later. It's going to be an ongoing struggle and learning this lesson now, when the stakes are low and people are forgiving, could be very valuable.
*In fact, one of his friends' mom saw the texts before us and responded to him individually, telling him to knock it off or she would contact his parents. I don't know this woman well, but I texted her to apologize, and she was extremely cool about it. She said not to worry too much, that it's just part of growing up these days (true) and that Lil' S2 is a good kid (also true) who is welcome to hang out with her son anytime. I really appreciated her response.
And some immediate good things did come out of this as well. Without watch time, Lil' S2 spent more time doing other, I would say better, activities. (It's like that scene on The Simpsons when all the kids stop watching Itchy & Scratchy.) He's really gotten into riding bikes around the neighborhood with his little friends, which is great. The G & G boys all got bikes during the Covid lockdowns (S was already borrowing one from a friend), rode them like twice, and then they just sat in our shed for a few years. Lil' S2 is now too big for his original bike, but his brother's fits him nicely, so he took over that one, and so at least one them is getting used. In theory, I could ride mine more, but I don't really like street cycling for some reason. I can't explain it, as I like being outside, and I like riding the stationary bike. You would think I would love outdoor riding, but I don't really. I don't hate it, but I don't love it.
Lil' S2 has also taken up Rubik's Cube solving, which makes me super proud. He's gotten quite good at it. Over the course of three weeks I watched him go from struggling to solve it with instructions and with my help (I learned how to solve one a few years ago) to being able to do it by himself with instructions to being able to do it by himself without instructions to being able to do it by himself without instructions in a minute and 15 seconds. That's about a full minute faster than I've ever been able to do it, by the way. I've been trying to figure out how he's so much faster than me, and I think it's simply that he's way quicker than me at doing the moves. His fingers just move faster than mine. I'm well past my physical peak, especially when it comes to quick-twitch motion; he's not. My only hope is to learn more algorithms that are faster for different starting states. I definitely can't out-turn him, but I can probably outthink him... for now.
Seeing how Lil' S2 has thrived with less screen time has prompted S and I to make some of the limitations permanent for both he and his brother. They both need it for different reasons. Lil' S1 is almost certainly not going to text inappropriate things to his friends. On the contrary, he's a bit of a goody-two-shoes when it comes to that type of thing. The other day I overheard his friend drop his phone and say "fuck!", and Lil' S2 mildly scolded him for it. I couldn't make out exactly what he said, but the final line was something like, "In this house that's all we ask." But Lil' S1 is way more susceptible to the addiction aspect of screens than his brother. Left to his own devices,* he will spend just about all of his waking hours on his phone or iPad. Even his reading, his saving-grace hobby, has gone down significantly in favor of listening to podcasts. And, look, nobody loves podcasts more than me, but I just don't think it's healthy for anybody, especially a child in his formative years, to have earbuds constantly in his head.
*See what I did there?
I fear that I'm going to have to start setting a better example and not be on my devices as much when I'm hanging out at home. S is already on me a little bit to do that. I try to explain to everybody that I already put in hours and hours, nay, years and years, of brain development without screens, but it does little to convince them. Also, when I'm on my phone, I'm almost always doing something somewhat productive. I'm doing a crossword puzzle or reading an article or doing trivia with a friend I otherwise wouldn't keep in contact with. I don't do social media at all anymore, and I (almost) never zombie-out on YouTube for hours on end. But, again, it's not really very persuasive, and I understand that. If you tell your kids how bad it is to be on a device all the time, and you're on a device all the time, it's just not going to land, even if it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
All this does make me happy, however, that I grew up before the time of device ubiquity. I mean, we had TV and video games, of course, but they weren't as good, and, most importantly, the good stuff wasn't available 24/7. When I got home from school there was nothing on TV but cartoons and soap operas. I didn't have all of TV history at my beck and call. And if I wanted to play Nintendo, I only had the same games I had already grown tired of months ago. I couldn't get online and instantly have a new experience. I had to play Cobra Triangle for the umpteenth time. It just wasn't that great. It's not like I consciously decided to better myself by going outside and touching grass. It was just more fun than the other options.
Also, I was just bored a lot of the time, and I think there's value in that. Necessity is the mother of invention, and by corollary, boredom is the mother of imagination. When you have nothing to do as a child, you get creative real quick. In fact, I have a feeling people are going to realize this and boredom is going to make a comeback -- like, it's going to become trendy for people to force themselves to be bored for a little while everyday. Maybe it already is. That's kinda what meditation is, after all. But meditation has a spiritually aspect to it that boredom lacks. Maybe that's how we sell boredom to the masses. We call it secular meditation instead. Secular meditation -- I think I'm on to something here.
Until next time...
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