control ...

I have this gym friend that I go sprinting with on a Tuesday morning.  We meet up at the track and then do 100/200/400/800m sprints, whatever.  Usually I get a ping the evening before and we discuss what distance, how many repetitions and what rest period between.  Having someone expecting you to turn up is always a good thing as far as health and fitness is concerned, and it's my preferred mode of control.

On the other side of the scale, often at the track we see groups of people or individuals having their active lives controlled by others in a way I used to think was good but now I wonder.  You know, the guy with the stop watch, waiting for a client to finish the lap.  The coach screaming at a bunch of adolescent rugby players that they're "pussies ... lazy SOBs etc. etc".  The parents who turn running around the track into their version of a nightmare.  Kid version = running around randomly on and off grass, perhaps on the track, occasionally backwards, sideways, skipping.  Parent version means all eyes to the front and proceed at speed.

Sometimes in my quest for the healthy, nicely shaped body (I didn't say the "perfect" word), I'd like to relinquish control to some third party. Someone who will tell me fitness wise, what to do and when and how much of it. Ditto with food, how much, when and what.  But as in fitness and health, so in life and so in parenting.  The only way is to take control, or if you're the controlling party is to give control.

I was chatting with one of the ladies I volunteer with.  She's a grandmother and she was lamenting that her daughter is (a) very controlling, and (b) controlled by her 4 year old grandson.  How ironical is that.  I was telling her about my fellow cellist telling me how hard it was to kill a baby (can't find the link, but it's out there somewhere on my blog), and how dads need to be able to forge a relationship with their kids WITHOUT the interference of mum.  No matter how competent mum is or how incompetent dad is, the relationship and muddling through is more important than whether the clothing matches or the nappy is on the right way.  She said her daughter would never let that happen as she was too controlling and always criticized her husband.  Luckily said husband was all for harmony and just let her nag on.  But then, the son, didn't drink water, only juice.  Yes, he already had 3 cavities, but he refused to drink water.  And when she tried to go out and leave her son with her husband, the boy cried so much that she had to come home.  That was the point where I said it was hard to kill a baby.  Even if they cried until they got sick.  How we create our own monsters.

My daughter is doing a big group project at school at the moment.  5 girls and a deadline.  Luckily she's maintaining her sense of humour but it's beyond interesting hearing her debrief every afternoon.  Oh I'm so glad I've left the work floor and don't have to manage or participate in any groups.  The girl they're having the most difficulty with?  The one who has learnt (yes of course, you're not born with this behavior), that if she sulks or whines long enough she gets her way.  The one who needs the final word.  The one, when things goes wrong, puts her head in her hands and laments what a disaster it is for 30 minutes, while the rest of them say "oh, damn" and just get on with fixing the issue.   I listened to her stories, and just asked her to imagine what this child's home life must be like if this is the way she responds to people and issues around her.  I put on my "MBA" hat (that expensive year has to have been good for something) and told her about the models of conversation that one could employ in those situations, the acknowledging the feeling, allowing it, putting a time limit on it and then back to business.   By the way I've been getting these emails from "Vital Smarts" and they have some pretty good "scripts" on handling stuff (aka people) and issues.

It's easy to be a controlling mother (or father I guess, but the man in our life is so not controlling that it's not an issue), I'd even go so far to say that it's "default mode" for a lot of us alpha female ex-corporate types.  The interesting thing is when you start to let go of being controlling (your kid, their school, education, life, activities) you also let go of being controlled.  Same stick just a different side.  The only control needed is self control.  Now that's a different story.

Being a mother

Another mother's day has come and gone.  The whole family was very sweet.  From the oops moment at 6.30am when my daughter rushed in to hug me and wish me a happy mother's day and I said "please, just one more hour sleep, just today" and she cuddled a bit more and then slunk out and they all went and walked the dog and let me sleep until 8.30 ... when my breakfast was served - at the table, not in bed, as they know I hate having breakfast in bed...  and then I was allowed to go off and have my hair attended to while they cooked lunch - I got home to a roast leg of lamb and salad and chocolates, and wasn't allowed to enter the kitchen once, to help or to clear up.  And then a lovely music concert by the kids playing me their latest pieces, lying reading, and dozing off... woken in time for a walk to the botanical gardens to meet up with friends and an SSO mother's day concert on the grass.  And my son didn't say "chill" once to me. All day.

It's been quite a ride the last 11 years ... but it's good.  I've been reading through some of my old posts as I re-post them and I can't believe how stressed and unhappy and angry I was, all around 2 years ago before the move here.  Stress is a truly terrible thing.  There is a lot of saccharine and sentimentality about this whole mother's day thing.  But at the end of the day, you really have to be that one constant and consistent thing in kids lives.  Something they can depend on.  And to do that requires so much self-mastery.  It's been all these years just realising that. If I lose control over my emotions it just spirals out and messes up everything for everyone.  When I'm secure and confident and at peace, so is my home and my children.  When I want change, the only thing I can change is myself.  It's so easy. So simple.  But the hardest thing ever.

new and admirable

I was wandering around Kennedy Town yesterday evening on a mission to find something or another (buttermilk - then finally just made it with milk and vinegar), anyway, I discovered a new bakery in Cadogan street.  It looked really nice and quite trendy.  I popped in to find out the opening hours since I like supporting independent things rather than Park N Shop and Wellcome where possible.  Turns out that it is a social enterprise operated by Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (whose history is in itself very interesting) and is a cafe, a production unit and gives classes dedicated to train and employ people with disabilities.

I hope they do brilliantly - more so when you guys all go and support them!

A new note on depression

Just to let those of you who were following Hyperbole and a Half - she's back with a very very good posting on depression.  It's worth reading for anyone who either is, has been, or has someone who is or has been depressed in their lives.

I'd love to be able to illustrate my posts in that wonderful wry and naive way she has.

small signs

I was chatting to a friend who has moved back to the states the other morning.  She has a horrid commute of 45 minutes each way (remember that people!) and occasionally gives me a buzz to catch up.  One of the things we were talking about is how you know if your kids are doing ok or not - academically in this instance.  It was something my husband and I were discussing as we went to see his teacher the other day.  In my friends case, it has become easy.  They do tests and get marks and if you were getting 80% and now you're getting 60% you know there is a problem and if it's going the other way you know things are improving.  Or something like that.

We came from that system.  My daughter loved knowing she was in the top 3 in her class.  The position shifted from test to test or subject to subject, but she made sure she was up there.  My son helped to make every other kid feel good about themselves.  Coming home with a 1 or 0 or maybe 5 points out of the potential 50, 100, 20, whatever, who cares, wasn't unusual.  Then you know that there is a problem.  But actually do you know what the problem is?  Or is it very easy to say that your kid (and by extension you) have or are the problem.  Or do you go and blame the teacher or the system?

There is no easy answer.  Last year when he was doing weekly times table tests, he got really good at his times tables, and at times tables tests.  This year he's all but forgotten his times tables.  So much for only having to learn them once.  And that I think is the issue.  Kids aren't dumb (or not generally, even if they're not succeeding at school), so they go for the goodies.  But then the problem is when the goal posts change, or they fail for whatever reason - bad night, low blood sugar, not in the mood, bloody minded, distracted, then they forget that there is this distinct physical and metaphysical boundary between who they are and the number on a piece of paper.  (Not just kids by the way, says me, the studying mum).

So what is the answer?  Honestly, don't ask me, I have no clue.  I could argue either way. It's also not ever grading or examining or putting under stress or requiring performance.  But it's also not only doing that.  But where is the line drawn.

Deep down, deep deep down, I think we all want to know that our kids are going to be OK.   How we define what "OK" is, really differs hugely from person to person.  My OK right now is defined by them being able to live physically and financially and emotionally independent from us at the appropriate time and us still being a family and loving each other.  We don't talk about college or university or careers at home.  I don't have any expectations in that regard of them.

I think my kids are going to be OK.  And the only way I can have that feeling, are from small signs.  Very small signs.  They don't get presented to you on a piece of paper in a sealed envelope with your name on them and a row of numbers and symbols and comments. So you have to look out carefully for them.  Catch them as they hover and disappear.

The moment when my son was sitting struggling through spelling and Bach's first cello suite started playing on the radio and he leaned back, closed his eyes with a blissful look on his face and said "I just LOVE that piece of music".  Walking in the supermarket with my daughter and her saying that her group had decided that the background of their presentation was going to be purple and she really thought blue, you know a darkish blue but not quite navy would go much better "but it didn't matter, it was more important that we get it done and keep harmony in the group".   Walking the dog and my son absolutely bubbling over because they'd spent time with some autistic kids and his buddy was the "smartest, greatest kid you could imagine" and then him going on to tell me everything positive the kid had done and said that just confirmed my son's view that this kid was such a good person to spend time with.  Coming home to the sound of my daughter playing the same 4 notes over and over and over and over again in order to get them right.    My son running a mile the other day.  Each round he was skipping and smiling and turning around to encourage the other kids running.  He was having the time of his life.  And the coach afterwards saying - " you do realise he did that in under 7 minutes.  That's really fast for a 9 year old."  No, I wasn't timing him, yes I did think he was going pretty fast, (I've just checked to see if the coach was right)  but I really loved the fact that he was loving doing it.  My daughter stating that the math (irregular fractions) they were doing was something she'd done 2 years previously at ISF.  But then instead of moaning about it, or expecting me to talk to the school or the teacher about extending her, she said, "hmm, it's really interesting to go from an irregular fraction to a decimal, but I'm wondering how you'd do it the other way" and then her spending a couple of days googling it and trying it out and playing around with it. 

My daughter made the most astute comment the other day.  She was discussing PE (physical education, sport, whatever you call the compulsory moving part of the school curriculum), and how some kids just didn't take part.  She'd been puzzling about it for a while, since for her (and her brother) everything to do with movement is fun and challenging and worth doing.  Finally she came to the conclusion that there was nothing really stopping these kids doing the things except the fact that they didn't want to.  But "why would someone not want to even try?" was the question, they had to be there anyway and not trying didn't help anyone.  We went into the whole question of motivation, and she was astounded to hear that most of my first year of industrial psychology was devoted to the question of motivation.  And that's how I know they'll be OK.  They're motivated. Self-motivated.  A small sign, that's actually a big sign.

Guests and fish

It was Benjamin Franklin who said it: "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days" , it's just one of many quotes one can find about guests.  Some more charitable than others, like this one: "tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that's really where you wish they were" (George Bergman), or "to be an ideal guest, stay at home" (Edgar Howe).

There is a funny thing about being an expatriate which I think people living a normal life in normal circumstances don't have.  That thing about having guests around. To stay.  To sleep for extended periods.  About dedicating a room in your small house or apartment for people who may drop by.  Don't get me wrong, there are some guests that I love having around.  There are people who have stayed with us, who at the end of their stay, I'm happy for them to move in on a permanent basis.  And then there are guests like we have now, where, should they request to stay with us again, the answer will be a firm "no".

What is the difference?  Are we losing the art of being good hosts or good guests because it is not as common as it used to be?  This is an absolutely delightful description of the etiquette to be employed by a host / hostess in their country house, by Emily Post.  She goes on to describe the perfect and not so perfect guest.    And then there is this interesting little bit about why one would want to be a guest :  "We enjoy staying with certain people usually for one of two reasons. First, because they have wonderful, luxurious houses, filled with amusing people; and visiting them is a period crammed with continuous and delightful experience, even though such a visit has little that suggests any personal intercourse or friendship with one’s hostess. The other reason we love to visit a certain house is, on the contrary, entirely personal to the host or hostess. We love the house because we love its owner. Nowhere do we feel so much at home, and though it may have none of the imposing magnificence of the great house, it is often far more charming."

Unfortunately I think at times, our home is just treated as a cheap hotel by people who want their creature comforts and conveniences, but don't want to pay the price.

A hotel has a price, but so does being a guest in someone's home.  Unfortunately Emily Post isn't around to spell it out (I was amazed at the detail ... especially around breakfast), but there are a few guidelines out there on the internet, including from her great granddaughter, and here is one from LongStanding, I particularly like their numbers  4, 7 & 9.  I guess that is one of the gripes I have at the moment with our houseguests.  They've arrived, barely interacted with us, leave the guest room and the laundry/study room (which is temporary a guest room for their kids) a complete dump, we've babysat their kids without them even asking if it was convenient or we had other plans. They've not upheld arrangements to join for meals, be back on time for the kids to play together, etc. etc.  I take issue with tips like "bring a gift" - to be honest I don't expect a gift and more to the point, bringing a gift, or taking your host to dinner doesn't make up at all for other disagreeable behaviour.   What else is disagreeable?  Literally using the place as a hotel.  So you surface after the host has left and get home after they're in bed.  You don't join in any meals.  You put your food in their fridge and don't offer to cook or clean.  You make vague promises that aren't kept.  When you're around, the only interaction is to ask the password for the WIFI, and then sitting around with your iPad.  You don't explain your itinerary so that it's clear when you will or will not be home for meals.  And the worst of all - you don't leave a tip for the maid.

And a good guest?  Fortunately we've had more of those than of this horrid experience.  Good guests are relaxed.  They have plans, but they're flexible plans.  They're plans that can include you, the hosts, or your children, or not, by mutual agreement.  They join in for family meals.  Yes, we're big on sitting around having meals together - particularly in the weekend, most breakfasts, and as many dinners as is possible.  They're content to sit on the patio and read a book, but equally content to engage in conversation, or jump up and do something silly with the kids.  When you go into the kitchen to prepare something or bring something out, they follow you.  Stand and chat while you're doing something or ask if they can chop or stir or otherwise be helpful.  And if they can't they just chat and keep you company.  They are clear as to when they will and will not be around.  Particularly for meal times.  And they surprise you by having stocked things in your fridge for the sharing by everyone, or cooking a delicious meal, or baking a cake (after having asked if you mind them doing so).   They interact and they engage.  It's about the experience.  It's about the engagement.  It's about the sharing and laughing and fun.  It's not about a free bed.

And the kids.  I've had a poor little boy, who has rushed home, twice in a row, eagerly done his homework and music practise, desperate to finish in time so that he could spend time with the son of our guests.  Forgone joining me to watch his sister in her touch rugby finals. Only to be disappointed, twice in a row by the non-appearance of said family.  Despite agreements, despite the fact that a simple phone call could have sufficed to manage expectations.

And then we've had guests who have come back early from their shopping expedition to make sure that they were home on time to meet the kids at the gate to have a marathon Monopoly game with them.  We've had guests who have spent DAYS making clay figures and animating them into a movie with the kids.  Who've taken them hiking, messed around with cooking with them (and their own kids).  They're the ones who could move in without a problem.

This morning I was considering a blanket ban on guests, and giving over the guest room to the helper, who has a rather grotty little room at the moment.  But now, writing this out and seeing the balance on a whole rather than the most recent incident, perhaps I'll reconsider.  The school is looking for people to host exchange students for 7 weeks ... is that something for us?  I was an exchange student once. It changed my life.

Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that's really where you wish they were.   Bergman, George E. - See more at: http://quotationsbook.com/quote/38100/#sthash.ymJvmFsV.dpuf

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.   Franklin, Benjamin - See more at: http://quotationsbook.com/quote/18093/#sthash.r2mQ5dpW.dpuf

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.   Franklin, Benjamin - See more at: http://quotationsbook.com/quote/18093/#sthash.r2mQ5dpW.dpuf

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.   Franklin, Benjamin - See more at: http://quotationsbook.com/quote/18093/#sthash.r2mQ5dpW.dpuf

disappointed but not surprised

I attended 2 recitals last week.  One brass one strings.  The brass was fine. Short and to the point, the kids did their thing with a minimum of intervention of the teacher, we all applauded and left.  The strings I attended out of interest.  I'm not entirely happy with the way that my son's viola lessons are going, and our recent trip to Japan and annual dose of pure Suzuki method has kind of made things worse as I cringe as he's scolded during lessons (mainly for not reading music, as opposed to not practicing).  The teacher has little patience for the fact that he's been trying to read treble clef in the morning (trumpet), and for him, at the end of the day, to switch to alto clef (viola) is just a step too far.   Suzuki's mantra was "never scold a child" - which I guess is what my main issue was with the Tiger Mum and her description of her application of the Suzuki method.

So I attended the string recital in order to see if it was worth letting him try learning strings at school.  My initial hunch 18 months ago that it wasn't, was truly born out.  I didn't have very high expectations - I'd heard the junior, middle & high school strings playing at concerts, and to be polite, they sounded dreadful. At every level.  But one has to think perhaps the songs were too difficult, or the rehearsal times too short.  Alas, it's the underlying players.  Not one single child, from the beginner to the most advanced could perform the simple task of playing in tune. And each and everyone of them were playing a song that was above their capability level.

How does this happen?  It's easy to blame the teacher, but the teacher must have at least some role in this.  A good teacher will not let a child progress unless they can play something beautifully.  Or is it the child who gets "bored" with the same piece?  Or the parents who want to see them moving through the repertoire?   Or is there not enough practicing going on?  Or too many conflicting demands on time?  Having two children with two instruments each, I suspect it's a bit of all of the above.

What is the solution?  Just give up? Change teachers?  I'd always say, no, change method.  Of all the educational methods I've come across, truly Suzuki has been the only one that I'd completely and wholeheartedly endorse.   I keep saying it's not about the music, and it isn't. But in the case of music it really works.   The most fundamental, the most basic thing about playing is to play in tune.

Everything that is wrong about parenting can be seen back in that type of recital.  Pushy parents, over stretching kids, applauding and praising something that was sub-par.  Giving candy at the end as a reward (f.m.).  Fortunately my kids were on the same page when we got in the car.  I didn't have to say anything - they did.  About the lack of playing in tune.  About the over enthusiasm of the audience.  And my daughter remarked wryly that none of the "good" players in the orchestra took lessons at school.

Yesterday, our family got together with 2 others.  I didn't know the 2 other families, the only thing we had in common is that we'd all had some association with Suzuki music.  3 cellos, 3 violins and a viola and we just played together and separately for an hour.  The youngest was 8 and I think I was the oldest, with everything inbetween. And then had lunch and chatted.  One of the fathers had actually been to Japan and met Suzuki, attended some of his classes.  Another was a Suzuki teacher, who unfortunately was leaving Singapore.  They spoke of how different classes / lessons were in the past, in Japan.  One was told that your lesson was on "Tuesday".  You just arrived and sat around and waited and listened to everyone else having their lessons.  People better than yourself and people less accomplished.  And then you had your turn. And you may have a lesson of 10 minutes and you may have a lesson of a hour.  But the whole 5 hours you were sitting there you were learning. You played together and you played alone.  Another father spoke of how in his native India that is how the masters taught the Sitar.  You arrived after work and may not get to play until 3 hours later. But in all that time the expectation is that actually you are having a lesson and you are learning.  I can't imagine that happening in the here and now of life.   Not with overscheduled kids and parents and everyone trying to be "well rounded" and ensuring that our CV's match up with some kind of ideal that some admissions officer of a pre-school, high school or university would think was acceptable. (Read this and weep).  How on earth did we get to this point?

My kids had a blast.  My son asked if we could do this every week.  My daughter, who had fallen asleep after lunch and a dose of anti-histamines for severe hay fever, woke up and said "where is everyone, I want to play some more".   There are aspects of 18th century life that are very appealing - like getting together to play music.  Why don't we do that type of thing anymore?  Why do we subcontract that type of fun and enjoyment to schools where it's a once a year recital of few?  It's just a few weeks before the end of term for some schools here, but I think my resolution for the next school year will be a once a month musical soiree.  I'm sure we can find enough people to join in.

Huisje, boompje, beestje

Is a Dutch saying, that roughly translates as "house, tree, animal", but indicates middle class domestic suburban bourgeois existence.  It's something we, when young and childfree and hopping onto planes to exotic destinations on a weekly basis, used to say with some derision.   And now we are them, more or less.

It took a while to get to the last step - the animal one.  Unless you count the 11 odd years that we've had children.  Finally, on moving here we succumbed and got a dog.  I'm not a pet fan.  I'm highly allergic to animal fur and don't enjoy spending my life with swollen eyes, red face and itchy throat.  Cats and horses are the worst for me.  Dogs depend on the hairiness.  And, just as when I was child free and every child in a radius of 200m would make a beeline for me, so to, it is with animals.  They always head in my direction.  Animal magnet.  I grew up with animals on our annual trip to my grandparents farm.  But animals were working animals.  We had a succession of dogs, I guess mainly for guarding purposes, who lived outside, and I can't recall ever taking any of them for a walk.  They got their exercise from tearing around the yard from the front to the back barking a whoever walked past.

It was in HK that i really didn't like dogs very much at all.  Unlike here in SG where owners are limited to one dog in a flat of a specific range of breeds and a maximum of 3 in landed properties, in HK people can own as many dogs of any type that they choose.  And they do.  Also unlike here in SG (wow, I'm finding some positives about this place), dogs, like people (particularly if they have the status domestic worker) are only around to walk around in very few designated areas, and I think there is only one or two parks where they are welcome on the Island.   The result is that every single pavement and walkway around high rise buildings, particularly in midlevels is a stinking cesspool of animal urine, and often feces too.

What have I learnt from owning a dog?  Or at least being its caretaker, as I don't really like the designation "own" for life forms.   On the down side - they shed hair, they need attention, they need feeding, unlike children - you can't take them everywhere, in fact, there are places where I'd rather see dogs than children, but there you go.  They need walking and grooming.  They get ill.  They get infected, they need operations. They have a limited life span.  You can't just hop on a plane with them and go on holiday.

But, like children, all the downsides are more than amply compensated by the positives and what you can learn from them.  These days one of my best childrearing tips to somone would be "get a dog".   We are very fortunate in that we adopted a "grande dame" as we like to call her.  An elderly golden labrador who had been perfectly trained and wonderfully cared for (HBD rules, owners couldn't take her with).  She doesn't bark. She doesn't bite and she's highly sociable - just loving people.  She behaves like a puppy, always happy to see you.

What is it about having a dog that works?  Well, to be honest, it only works if you work.  Right now what works for us is that she needs to be walked twice a day for at least 30 minutes at a time.  And right from the start we insisted that the dog walks were undertaken by us and, at least once a day, by one or both of the kids with us.

I don't know if it is the motion.  Or perhaps it's walking parallel to each other and not having to look each other in the eye.  Maybe it's the fact that dogs acknowledge their species in a way that humans don't and every other dog has to be greeted and sniffed at in every extremity.  But dog walking opens communication.  As we walk along, everything comes tumbling out.  What happened at school, what they're thinking, what they're wondering about.  How child labour works. How sex slavery and trafficking works.  When you can fall pregnant.  What prostitution is.  How my day was. Why kids bully each other.  Why kids can pretend to be so nice to the teacher and then cause trouble and taunt classmates without the teacher noticing. What makes children motivated and what makes them give up (my daughter on PE).  What they're reading and what they're thinking.  What other children are watching on movies and TV.

I can guarantee that we'd not have any of these conversations if we didn't get out of the house, into nature and start walking.  And we wouldn't do  that on a daily basis if we didn't have a dog.

what kind of technology enters your children's lives?

I'm a bit of a geek, I'll admit that freely.  I'd like to think of myself as a "functional" geek.  Inasmuch as I try to know as much as I need to know in order to function in a technological world and keep up with it as far as it's relevant to my life.  So in the early days I was typing in DOS commands.  I'm the go-to person in the household for setting up and administering the computers, setting up the hifi (haha, yes we still have that) and the wifi.  I'm also the one that technical services has to talk to when something goes wrong.

Yesterday was such a conversation with Dell.  The desktop was having "keyboard failure" issue.  I'd gone to the user groups, done everything requested, including opening the computer and removing and replacing the relevant power cords before phoning them.  I'm not scared of the insides of computers as long as I have step by step instructions next to me and no children, husbands or dogs giving gratuitous advice from the sidelines.  I told the person on the other side the steps I'd taken.  He was obviously not used to speaking to (a) a woman and (b) someone who had gone through self help before picking up the phone, so he took me through the steps again of draining the power, unplugging peripherals etc. etc.  which I explained I'd done and that I'd also opened up the computer and taken out the blue cord etc. etc.  - the step that they obviously don't require their Singapore customers to do.  I said OK, to humour you I'll do it all again, but it ain't going to work, so I did it all again and it didn't.  So after 15 minutes waiting for someone to answer my call and another 15 minutes of repeating something I knew wasn't going to work, they bowed down and made an appointment for me.

So this is where I'm coming from.  I don't have issue with my kids using the computer.  I don't have issue with them being on the internet.  Playing the occasional game.  They went through the whole Minecraft thing last year - fortunately amongst the early adopters and they got over it.  Now parents are moaning that kids are newly discovering it for the first time and completely addicted.  My kids have email accounts, skype accounts (to chat with their HK friends), my son has an Instagram and Twitter account, and I'd have not issue with them having Facebook accounts now, although I've said we'll abide by the rules, even if I think they're silly.  You see I'd rather they do it all now while I have some control over how and when and where they use the technology and I can influence their behaviour than when they turn 13 or 18 or whatever and become all secretive and private and huddle in their rooms and lock the doors.  Well the latter won't be happening - old houses with missing door keys have their advantages.

We've had another interesting matter to resolve in the house.  Houses built in the 40's have solid walls.  Very solid walls it turns out.  The wifi will not reach from the ex-dining room turned study to the bedroom section.  At first I put some time and effort into the matter.  Called Starhub, messed with the settings of the wifi online, had expensive technicians come around.  And then I had a Zen moment and decided it was a damn good idea.  No wifi in the bedrooms means no technology in the bedrooms.  That means it's really easy to put in a curfew on devices, eliminate blue light in the rooms, monitor computer activity, all those good and great things that the "experts" say you should / shouldn't do but somehow you don't have the willpower or the energy or the consistency to implement.  It's all been taken out of my hands.  It's even good for dad and me.

We had a rather nasty surprise the other day - did you know that there are legal ages not only for Facebook but also for a plain old vanilla gmail account - 13 for most countries?  And if you want google+ you need to be 18?  And that it differs by country?  Twitter has no age limit, Instagram it's 13. There are some guidelines online - and this site I think is very good at explaining everything on the various online media,  both the good and the bad and ways in which to block or control or influence so that the good outweighs the bad.

The very first step I'd recommend is to make sure you know what the hell is going on.  There is no point in hanging out the old fogie and not participating.  If you don't know what the hell is going on and how it works and why, I don't really think you're entitled to an opinion on the matter, let alone enter into a discussion with your kids or their teachers on it.  Yes, I have a facebook account and I use it A LOT, I know why it is so gratifying and I know its good and bad points.  Yes, I have a twitter account, and I use it to a lesser extent.  Yes old fashioned me, I still blog.  I have a youtube account which I very rarely use, but I use youtube a lot. I don't have instagram, but my son's account is on my & my husband's iphone and monitored by us as well as his digital literacy teacher and class teacher.  The agreed limits for him on both Twitter and Instagram is that he may only befriend professional photographers, and tweet about photography.  Yes - that may be a slippery slope, because photography can go in many directions.  But we'll deal with it.

My daughter only recently opened a Skype account - to Skype someone for the project she's doing at school on child labour.  She's a late adopter and a bit of a technophobe, far enjoying books and libraries to wikipedia and chatting online.  That's also OK.  But then one of her friends in HK had a birthday, and she could also have this long Skype chat with her and suddenly Skype was ok.   Technology is a tool, just like a kitchen knife is a tool.  I didn't lock up the knives or even cover the plugs or put the glassware on higher shelves with the kids.  I just consistently taught them what they could and couldn't use, or supervised them when they did.

We keep talking about this stuff.  Children researching on line are going to come across a lot of things you'd rather they didn't.  I'll blog another time about the conversations we've been having about child sex workers and sex generally, because when you start researching child labour, that's one of the avenues you inevitably end up going down.  You've got to keep the dialogue going.  And I just hope we can.

I've put a little survey down the side box - I'd be interested in knowing who has what technology for themselves and their kids and your opinions on it. So please fill it in, and comment with your and your families digital habits.