I don’t remember the exact details but there was a day, many years ago, when my mother was heading to the mall and told me to invite a friend to accompany us. Nobody answered at my chosen friend’s home when I called so I waited a few minutes to see if they had returned home and then tried again. This family was among the first in town to buy the latest technology but when their new “answering machine” clicked on I didn’t leave any messages. Instead I wandered the short distance of freedom I was allowed at the mall by myself and the following day had an extremely awkward conversation with my friend’s father about why I had called his house twenty times in a half hour period. How was I to know that this stupid new machine of his was counting?
It wasn’t the first time that I learned a lesson by making an ass out of myself, something that to this day seems to be my preferred method, but is the first time that I can remember being made aware that there were certain rules of etiquette that applied to use of the telephone. Besides how many times it was OK to try and get a hold of someone over a time period there were rules about how late you could call, how much time was acceptable to tie up a phone line, what circumstances were dramatic enough to call the operator and ask for an “emergency break in” on what was assumed to be somebody’s sister’s breaking of that last law.
If that last one brought back memories you probably should have had a colonoscopy by now.
Nowadays even the word “phone” has a completely different meaning. I use Bark to try and monitor what my daughter is doing on the Internet and Google alerts me to any new app that she adds but even as I try and avoid some of the mistakes and battles that we had with her older sister I’m realizing that besides all of those concerns dealing with Internet access there are also old plain old fashioned communication lessons that she needs to learn.
One lesson of course is the same one that I needed to learn all those years ago, that texting or calling a person nonstop isn’t the right way to get their attention and is a quick way to annoy the crap out of their parents.
The time of day can be a factor in when it’s appropriate to call or text somebody but it’s also important to consider who you may be with. Communicating with one friend while hanging out with another is not only rude to the person or persons that you are with but also could potentially make the person that isn’t there feel bad and left out. Like many of these I think most of us also know a grown up that could benefit from hearing that.
She needs to learn that sarcasm is very difficult to convey in a text message and that something that you intended to be funny may not be interpreted that way. She’s already had to do something that I’ve had to do more than once myself – apologize to somebody and try to explain to them that they misinterpreted my intent. I’m only a few years away from turning fifty and it makes me feel like a complete jackass every time I add the letters “LOL” to the end of a message but it’s still a lot easier to type than ‘I’m trying to be funny, not an asshole right now. Please read what I just wrote in a congenial tone.”
She needs to remember that just like in real life, adults need to be communicated with differently. Not only because we aren’t going to understand all of the slang, abbreviations and emojis that you are using, but also because there is a level of respect that needs to be adhered to no matter what the medium of communication. Also, we don’t understand all of the slang, abbreviations and emojis that you are using.
Most importantly, and the thing that maybe isn’t emphasized enough as the most important thing, is knowing when it’s time to alert an adult to what friends might be saying. There is a line between betraying a friend’s trust and protecting them and it’s not only one that she will have to learn, but also one that parents that are monitoring these conversations will have to learn. I don’t anticipate it being easy for any of us.
I understand that just as it will be with almost everything else, experience will teach these lessons much more persuasively than I will. I’ll still give my occasional lectures because that’s what parents do and because she needs to be periodically reminded that for now at least, I’m going through her phone at night. I know that it’s only a matter of time before that becomes an issue, a privacy fight that I can’t win, but that’s really the endgame that we are working towards isn’t it? A time when our kids are doing and saying the right things even when we aren’t looking?
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Previously Published on Thirsty Daddy
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