Where R U?

      I am a grandmother now and it is an astonishing world of love and unending delight .   Finn, two years old, and Poppie, 5 months, now crowd my waking thoughts.  Everything is new; everything is now, with their Zen approach to the present. This snowman with raisin eyes is the most important self-made creature on earth.  The heartbreak of no is complete, universal, until attention shifts onto something else-- a truck, a game of chase-me.  These children continually remind me that the present moment is all that counts.  Joseph Campbell calls it eternity—where the past and the future intersect and fuse to this precise moment, here while you are reading.  Now while I am writing.  An eternity available to us all if we can remember to stay present.  Easy enough for kids, challenging for adults, but we know it when it happens. The past fades, the future is a blank slate, as attention shifts to now.

     One morning I took Finn to the same park I had taken his mama with her brothers when she was a girl.  I remembered the anchor and solace that playground provided for my friends and me—the kids climbing and tumbling largely ignored by the mothers swapping stories.  Oh sometimes things would get out of hand, and we would yell and move our arm around in their general direction, or a child would call out Watch me mama!  As she jumped from a swing at the height of its apogee into the beauty bark, but they had playing to do and we had talking to do and the worlds intersected only when necessary. 

     I sat down and watched Finn join kids of all sizes doing the things kids are wired to do:  stooping, jumping, skipping, and throwing.  Several mothers who could have been my friends and me sat nearby, only they weren’t talking.  They were head down texting on their cell phones.  I watched them fascinated.  Occasionally a child would yell Watch me mama!  And there would be a pause as she finished texting and she would look up and say the same things we said:  Wow, be careful.  Then she would drop her head back down.  Sometimes the mothers talked to each other.  Sometimes they held out their phone to share a photo, but mostly they were separate and hunched over their cell phones--the world at their fingertips while another world unfolded in real time right before them.

      This unsettled me, but why?  In both cases, years apart, the kids were largely ignored, as it should be.  A recent observational study of children at public parks by Myron Floyd at North Carolina State discovered that kids whose parents hovered over and managed their activities at the playground moved less, engaged less and were ready to go home faster than kids whose parents stayed on the periphery of their play.  

     I wondered if I was falling back on the Good-Old-Days thinking that my mother had hauled up occasionally (“I’m so glad I’m not raising kids today…”).  It’s an easy fallback, but not one that felt like it fit here.  It’s a grand time to be raising kids, but several things came to mind.  Years ago at that park we were heads up, with a diffuse, if unfocused, attention to the energy unfolding on the beauty bark.  The moment the head goes down, the focus shifts to the demands of the screen and closes down peripheral vision and attention, one of the reasons texting and cell phone use while driving a car is illegal.  More critically, it isolates those in our company while we tap away.  We are separate islands of intention.

    Technology has intersected with parenting for a few generations.  When my mother used a phone it was attached to a wall in the kitchen and had a short cord.  She kept her conversations short when the five of her children were underfoot.  My conversations on the phone when the kids were young were longer.  If I had to connect with Greg in Alaska, or with a troubled friend I had a remote phone that I could take outside on the deck and hold the sliding door closed while the kids pounded the glass, then pounded each other on the other side when I didn’t respond.  Gotta go. Click. 

     I mused on the role screen time has taken in our lives today, this hand held device that trumps human connection.  Fast-forward ten years in the lives of the families I watched that day and I wondered how they would handle a 12-year-old texting (or working the Cloud by then) at a family dinner with grandma.  Put it away, the mother will say.  Not now, the Dad will scold.   But if we don’t model appropriate times for social media how can we ask the same of our children?  We set a formidable example that the company of those we love comes second to an invisible receiver on a tiny machine. 

     I don’t believe unwavering attention upon our children is good.  In fact I believe it inhibits the development of the resiliency we need for a meaningful life, but I do believe that when we are engaged in social media in the company of our children, we can miss the winning basketball shot at a game and the window for conversation when we pick them up from school—irretrievable moments that build a family dynamic brick by brick.

    The role of the parent is to explain the world to their children, to help them make sense of complicated emotions and situations, to provide a language rich environment filled with words to lay down fears and foster curiosity.  Social media eats up this time, the arc of human connection passing unseen.  Where r u?    

     Finn is exploring the meaning of later.  I wanna dig, wanna go outside, wanna cookie.  Lay-ter he says repeating after me with a furrowed brow, not now.  He is not sure if later is a minute, an hour, or a month but we are getting to that, it will come.  As long as later is not connected to Nana on a playground texting his mama that Finn is the most enchanting 2 year old on the planet, that instead I participate in the tickle and chase of the present, because the boy will grow and the moments will slip away.

 

Comments

[nike shox pas cher]

Why don't I do it? For all our time-saving devices, we have only increased the demands on ourselves...now that we CAN communicate immediately, we're expected to. I wish sometimes we could throw it all away and just listen to the breeze in the trees.

[ralph lauren chemise]

Splendidamente detto, Nancy. Essere una mamma di due bambini piccoli mi riguarda, tutto si riferiscono. C'è un tiro da e verso i media nella nostra generazione, che ci fa sentire come se stessimo cogliendo il momento in "tempo reale", eppure ci si sente allo stesso tempo molto insoddisfacenti..

[camisetas baratas]

Yo estaba muy feliz de descubrir este sitio en bing.I quería decir gracias a ustedes con

respecto a este post fantástico! Yo surelyenjoyed cada poco de ella y me he marcado para

echar un vistazo a lo nuevo que publiques.

[gorras new era baratas]

Jag var mycket glad över att upptäcka denna webbplats på bing.I ville säga tack till er när det gäller denna fantastiska inlägg! Jag surelyenjoyed varje liten bit av det och jag har du bokmärkt att ta en titt på nya saker du postar.

[abercrombie ropa]

Para todos nuestros dispositivos de ahorro de tiempo, que sólo han aumentado las demandas sobre nosotros mismos ... ahora que nos podemos comunicar de inmediato, estamos a la espera. Deseo a veces nos puede tirar todo por la borda y sólo escuchar la brisa en los árboles...

[air max pas cher]

Your kids look so cute! We used to do so much for Halloween (yes my husband and I would dress up too) but them it all got to be too much since my husband loves to decorate for Christmas.

[Karen Magro]

Beautifully said, Nancy. Being a mom of two small children myself, I entirely relate. There is a pull from and toward media in our generation that makes us FEEL like we're seizing the moment in "real time" and yet it simultaneously feels very unsatisfying. I daily feel a powerful urge to just chuck the phone/computer, lie in the grass, and watch the clouds with my kids. Why don't I do it? For all our time-saving devices, we have only increased the demands on ourselves...now that we CAN communicate immediately, we're expected to. I wish sometimes we could throw it all away and just listen to the breeze in the trees.