Where Parenting & Culture Collide

While busily preparing dinner few months ago, I commented to a friend on the phone that I was, "just worn out." It had been a long day that began too early and I was trudging grudgingly through what remained to be done before bed time. A few minutes later, I noticed Chloe, my 8 year old, in a creative frenzy with paper, markers, glitter. . . (she gets that from her artist father, my creative frenzy looks like  dessert ). I was commanded not to look. She next requested help from a sibling to drag a card table upstairs. A few minutes later she began squirreling away with dishes from my kitchen. I had a pretty good idea of where this was going; my 8 year old is an incurable romantic. (The only one in our house, I might add.) I, not being quite as romantic in my nature, was thinking of the work involved in cleaning up her scheme, but I digress. By the time my husband got home I had dinner ready (can you hear the heavenly angels singing? They do that when I can manage to have...

When you were a kid, how much screen time were you allowed?  I have no recollection of clear rules about how much TV we could watch (TV being the only screen we owned). This is possibly because I remember almost no clear rules from my childhood (the two rules I remember: work hard and be honest). More likely there weren't strict rules for TV time, because there was no need. After all, there were only 5 channels and cartoons were only on some of the time. Either way, parenting clearly includes a new set of tasks that it didn't for the last generation. We have to limit screen time, lest our kids brains turn to mush (or so the fear mongering media warns). We have to monitor text messages and Facebook and Instagram and internet use. We have to teach our children how to interact with technology. All of this is utterly exhausting! So, when it comes to technology, I'm taking the principle approach, which is this: teach sound principles and then let them manage themselves when the...