They say that communication is the key to the success of a family. Keep the doors and channels of communication open at all times, say experts who have studied this subject for many years. At least that's what it said on the forward I got recently from an acquaintance.
Now, we are all at different points on the communication app scale - for me the dial veers between "I like the potential" and "Gosh, I am getting too old to keep up!", my husband is at "Don't really care as long as I can call and send messages...and play online bridge". My almost 13-year-old is at "Yup mastered that too, bring the next one on!"
She can hold her own in an electronics store about cookies and cakes and gingerbread and other things that ought to be on a bakery menu, not in a store that sells high-end gadgets, half of which, I am not sure which end of the anatomy to connect to. They all sound as if they would add several pounds of cellulose, and I should have banned them from the house. Instead, turns out they are the brains and muscles of our cell phones. I should have banned them anyway. The only person who knows how to use them all is my daughter. When any of us needs to install, troubleshoot, or learn how to use something on our cell phones or laptops, we call her.
My 4-year-old, thankfully, is still happy merely listening to songs on the phone and hasn't yet discovered any apps that would help him to colur within the lines and write cursive small letters within the boxes.
As you can imagine, there is no dearth of gadgets in our house that enable effective communication. Everyone except the 4-year-old has a laptop each on which we keep in touch with our colleagues and classmates whom we just saw a few hours ago, our next door neighbours whom we hardly ever see, our friends from many years ago, and a few people we don't really know but could - maybe.
Our birthday gifts over the last few years - especially for the kid - has inclined to move from roller skates and bicycles to articles more electronic. We got her an iPod a couple of years ago to encourage her appreciation for music. She has since been using it to belt out the latest and greatest hits from pimply boys and girls who still wear braces and probably need to be driven by their parents to recordings. Fortunately, however, the iPod has no other hidden talents - it plays music and that's all. The Kindle, on the other hand, which we naively got her so that we did not have to stockpile books that seemed to be reproducing at an alarming rate, we discovered to our horror can be used to access Facebook, chat with various friends on Google Plus, all in the middle of the night. This, we realized a little belatedly, is the twenty first century version of the old reading-in-bed-with-a-torchlight thing. I now do an electronics raid in her room at bedtime to make sure she actually sleeps. But for all I know, she's probably rigged the light switch to beam some bits of incoherent teenspeak to the ceiling of her best friend a few miles away.
I can't wait for her to turn thirteen. She would finally be old enough to use Facebook legally and I don't have to feel guilty about it any more. She would be, at least in the world of the Net, a mature and responsible adult! Hah!
So yes, as far as communication goes, I guess our family is doing quite well. Oh wait, you meant communication with each other? Now why didn't you say so before? Well, we do on occasion, chat with each other on Facebook and gmail across the dining table, and we're all each other's friends on Facebook. At least until we're unfriended. Does that count?
Now, we are all at different points on the communication app scale - for me the dial veers between "I like the potential" and "Gosh, I am getting too old to keep up!", my husband is at "Don't really care as long as I can call and send messages...and play online bridge". My almost 13-year-old is at "Yup mastered that too, bring the next one on!"
She can hold her own in an electronics store about cookies and cakes and gingerbread and other things that ought to be on a bakery menu, not in a store that sells high-end gadgets, half of which, I am not sure which end of the anatomy to connect to. They all sound as if they would add several pounds of cellulose, and I should have banned them from the house. Instead, turns out they are the brains and muscles of our cell phones. I should have banned them anyway. The only person who knows how to use them all is my daughter. When any of us needs to install, troubleshoot, or learn how to use something on our cell phones or laptops, we call her.
My 4-year-old, thankfully, is still happy merely listening to songs on the phone and hasn't yet discovered any apps that would help him to colur within the lines and write cursive small letters within the boxes.
As you can imagine, there is no dearth of gadgets in our house that enable effective communication. Everyone except the 4-year-old has a laptop each on which we keep in touch with our colleagues and classmates whom we just saw a few hours ago, our next door neighbours whom we hardly ever see, our friends from many years ago, and a few people we don't really know but could - maybe.
Our birthday gifts over the last few years - especially for the kid - has inclined to move from roller skates and bicycles to articles more electronic. We got her an iPod a couple of years ago to encourage her appreciation for music. She has since been using it to belt out the latest and greatest hits from pimply boys and girls who still wear braces and probably need to be driven by their parents to recordings. Fortunately, however, the iPod has no other hidden talents - it plays music and that's all. The Kindle, on the other hand, which we naively got her so that we did not have to stockpile books that seemed to be reproducing at an alarming rate, we discovered to our horror can be used to access Facebook, chat with various friends on Google Plus, all in the middle of the night. This, we realized a little belatedly, is the twenty first century version of the old reading-in-bed-with-a-torchlight thing. I now do an electronics raid in her room at bedtime to make sure she actually sleeps. But for all I know, she's probably rigged the light switch to beam some bits of incoherent teenspeak to the ceiling of her best friend a few miles away.
I can't wait for her to turn thirteen. She would finally be old enough to use Facebook legally and I don't have to feel guilty about it any more. She would be, at least in the world of the Net, a mature and responsible adult! Hah!
So yes, as far as communication goes, I guess our family is doing quite well. Oh wait, you meant communication with each other? Now why didn't you say so before? Well, we do on occasion, chat with each other on Facebook and gmail across the dining table, and we're all each other's friends on Facebook. At least until we're unfriended. Does that count?
Amazing..Ajit is on his laptop in his room and I am on mine..even as we speak.. we communicate more via the phone than we do face to face..
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