Thanks for Letting Me Know

Parenting teenagers and pre-teens during the internet era is much different than when I was growing up.  In some ways, it's easier but in others, it's way harder.

Back in the day , we had a lot more freedoms.  After we ate breakfast, we were gone for the rest of the day in the summer.  Usually riding our bikes around the neighborhood or playing in the woods.  We either went inside when it was dusk for dinner or we heard our parents call us. 

Either way, we somehow kept up with the time and we never missed lunch or supper (or dinner if it was Sunday afternoon).  And we did it without the help of cellphones to keep up with the time.  But that also meant that our parents couldn't get in touch with us either.  But they didn't worry.  Frankly, they were probably glad that we were out of their hair.

Moving on into the teenage years, we tied up our parents phone line, which didn't have call waiting and rang busy for hours at a time with two girls in the house.  The cord on that phone was stretched to the max because we would drag it as far as it would go when we were talking to our friends.  And then we'd stretch it some more.  (Poor phone was attached to the wall so a cord that was suppose to go only 2 foot was stretched to about 20 feet.)

Our phone was exactly like this one.  Alvacado green, baby.  It matched our kitchen.  :D

Unless our parents listened in our phone conversations (and they had to be VERY quiet when they picked up the other phone otherwise, we'd hear the 'click' and we knew), the other very good way for our parents to find out what we were doing was to find the notes that we passed to our friends.  They looked like this one.

 

Oh we had to be careful for sure.  But teenagers today have a distinct advantage.  Everything is electronic and they are much smarter about navigating the intersweb than us.  Okay.  That's true for me because I am definitely electronically challenged.  (Me who doesn't watch the TV if it's not preset to just hit one button to turn it on.  If anyone uses the TV for any function other than just watching TV and doesn't reset it for me, I can't watch it.  Sadly that is the truth.)  :(

Anyway, I *am* on fb.  I do *know* how to use that medium.  :D

You learn all KINDS of interesting things on social mediums.  I do troll my kids email accounts (which I may or may not be traumatized about), fb pages and other sites that I know they are on (reddit.com) to see what they are up to.  Wow.  People just let whatever is going on in their minds out for the entire world to see.  Sometimes I wonder if these kids parents ever look at their kids pages. 

Every now and then, someone may spill something on someone unintentionally.

And if I'm lucky, it's dirt on my kids that I didn't know. 

And then I say...thank you very much for letting me know?  :)

Such was the case recently that my sister-in-law posted something that caught my eye.  She was with Owen for several days at the beach and unknowingly ratted Owen out about having an instagram account.  Apparently Owen has an account and I had no idea. 

 

 

Did you see that I said "thank you for letting me know" to Liz.  ;)

I'm not sure whether to LOL or UGH. 

 

Parenting teenagers in this day and age sure lends itself to different, unique issues that I'm sure my parents didn't deal with.  Nope.  They just figured out what we did because we were careless and left notes laying around or even left beer tabs (or tab) on the floor. 

 

I mean.  *If* we did anything wrong, it sounds like something we probably would have done.  ;)