Tween Parent Texts

As a parent I have tried to keep up with the trends, strategies, and techniques of parenting four children. When I reflect on the years that my children were infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and even lower elementary ages, I can honestly say that I've done a pretty good job. I don't feel that I've emotionally scarred them for life. I fostered a safe and healthy environment for them to grow in, and I believe they all have been happy and reasonably content people.

That was before they hit the tweens. This is a relatively new term used now for children ages apx 8-12. This is the term now given for children who fall between childhood and adolescence--not quite children, but not yet teenagers. Wait a minute...when I was eight years old I was child. I pulled on my roller skates (the metal kind that fit over my shoes) and hit the driveway and the entire block of my neighborhood. When I was ten, I played jacks at recess and even managed to blow up a light socket in my classroom by gingerly dangling a metal staple in it and throwing a bouncy ball at it. (I think my teacher forgave me...after I moved on to sixth grade.) And by the time I was twelve, no one could convince me that I wasn't already a teen, except that I hadn't reached the blessed age of teen-dome (thirteen).

Now, as a parent, I have three tween daughters. Lord help me! Here is a snippet of what I read about them:

Tweens now suffer from eating disorders, are exposed to intense peer pressure, want to go places on their own, keep up with fashion and watch videos rated for older children, just as teenagers do...They have been targeted by the advertising and marketing industry as a new and distinct group to exploit, and with huge success...We give them more freedom to demand and consume material things but considerably less freedom than many of us experienced to play and explore the wider world. They are the immobile, mobile phone generation, speaking to or texting their freinds rather than going out to play or visit: they let their fingers (or thumbs) do both the walking and the talking as they key in their conversations via mobile phone and computers from the safety of their homes. We ask for more responsibility from our tween for doing well at school, but by and large, less domestic and personal responsibility at home....The "traditional" boundaries of childhood seem to be withering away. We should not be surprised, then, if our tweens do not know quite where to pitch themselves in terms of image or age, or simply how to be: whether to feel confident about what they can do, or uncertain because they are increasingly made aware of what or who they are not, or what they do not have. (as taken from the book Talking to Tweens by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer)

This author-parent is scared by that! Even more scarey is that this is happening in my own home. In the past, I have made every attempt to read good books that are on the market to help guide me in many areas of my life, not the least of which is parenting. I have relied heavily on the expertise of people like Barbara and Dennis Rainey, Dr. James Dobson, and Kevin Leman. However, with the coming of the tween era, not one of that elite group raised their own children in this techno-tween age. Sure, many of the day-to-day issues of parenting are the same as they have been for generations. How much should I make my child eat at dinner? Must I force him to eat broccoli? How do I get my child to make his bed? Should I use incentives and rewards (bribery, as some call it) or should I only expect my child to obey and then follow through with loving discipline if he chooses not to? And on and on the list goes.

However, the real issues that tweens are facing raise the stakes. Parents of tweens must not only contend with all of the aforesaid "traditional" parenting issues, but then add a whole other dimension to the mix. For starters, how do we parents effectively communicate with our tweens? Notice I did not use the word "talk." Do we talk to them? Do they talk to each other? Just two years ago my oldest was elated to get her first cell phone. I thought she'd use it to talk to her friends. Truthfully, that is a rare occurrence. More often than not, she uses it to listen to music, play games, take pictures and text.

I have long contended that texting is at the heart of the breakdown in communication with our current tweens and society at large. However, in reality it has been a slippery slope. Telephones, fax machines, e-mail, cell phones, texting, instant messages, blogging, twittering (still haven't figured that one out), and the list will surely get longer by tomorrow... Each one of these has been just another step away from serious face-to-face communication. The kind where body language and facial expression mattered more than the actual words used in a conversation. All the texting and e-mails are great for one thing, hiding the reality of a person's needs. These new ways to "talk" only drive us further and further away from truly sharing life with each other. Instead, we get a sound bite (usually no more than one sentence) and consider that good enough to last our relationship for a few more days.

So how does this factor into parenting? Well this week I caved. I bought a Blackberry Bold 3G. I added texting to our family plan. I can now officially communicate with my tweens, no matter where they are or what they are doing. I really believe I held out as long as I could. I don't like the choice I made this week, but as a parent whose children live in and must function in this current society, I need to be able to "talk" to my children, no matter the medium used. I will hold the line, though. We will still sit down at our dinner table every night together. No one will answer phones or texts during our meal. The tv will not be on. We will still meet in my bedroom every night for prayer and sharing time. I will still travel to four beds to tuck in each tween and their little brother and give each a kiss and tell each that I think they are wonderful. I will still make lunches, go on field trips, attend games and concerts, and work my fool head off to make enough money to send them on all the "character building" camps, trips, and retreats that I would like for them to enjoy.

Most of all, I will be here for them. I will hug them, love on them, cry with them, laugh with them, and walk each step of their journey with them. Undoubtedly I will call them, text them, IM them, twitter them (what is that, exactly?) and pray for them. I will share life with them all the way to the pearly gates and beyond, even if my thumbs go numb.

PS: When running spell check on this post, the following words were flagged as unidentified: tv, IM, tweens, and texting.