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I'm 45 years old, my parents asked the same things about me.. the screen wasn't necessarily a pocket companion at the time - but it was computers, consoles and

I'm 45 years old, my parents asked the same things about me.. the screen wasn't necessarily a pocket companion at the time - but it was computers, consoles and hand-held devices and all the stuff around them. At first, they fought me... and it was a dumb battle for battles sake. My parents never bothered to understand anything I did and generally just gave up and let me do whatever... Turns out, they were in the midsts of a relationship failure and there was no time for the kids, so they let me have at the computer... BUT... It worked :) I taught myself programming, operating systems, I ran a BBS that was the first BBS in texas to offer Linux downloads, I got published in books/magazines/journals talking/writing about OS/2, Linux and DESQview. In the end, I never went to school, my parents relationship was still crap but I made friends, found my wife and still work online to this day.. My kids are 13 and 17 and its new battles... but i just think back and remember where I started - I try and fill in the gaps of just "Caring" in general and just "wanting a relationship" with my kids in general - and i do that in lieu of trying to prohibit something that is already pervasive in their lives. Yes, I run firewalls, safety, anti-virus, family-safety, yes there are some things blocked - yes their phones have family safety too but mostly to do what I can to protect them from maliciousness. The last battle any parent can or should fight is the battles of pop culture, society and social interactions... espeially a year+ into a pandemic. we had to re-think the whole grounding from devices during pandemic because that was suicide to a teen... and in doing so - it sparked conversations we weren't having and made me realize i was just following in the same ignorant foot steps as my parents. Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment... It's crazy But damn, if they're doing all that effort and learning/collaborating on all that - they're getting skills that i find many adults still lack

akiselev 5y ago
> Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment... This brought to mind: Years ago when I was a teen, my mom grounded me and took my desktop away for quite a while, which was like a death sentence even back then. Given that it was an oversized cube case and there really wasn't anywhere to lock it away, I would always just grab it after school and keep using it until she got home. Problem is, she put the computer next to the door so I had to resort to locking the second lock to give myself time to put it back when she got home. I didn't think about it at the time but I. was being blatantly obvious and she clued me in years later that she knew what I was doing from the beginning. Punishments don't have to be all or nothing, they can be like locks: they won't stop the determined, but they will stop the opportunists. The punishment is the inconvenience of the workaround and often has the added benefit that enforcement requires spending more time with them. </parenting "advice" from a coddled nonparent>
DanBC 5y ago
> we had to re-think the whole grounding from devices during pandemic because that was suicide to a teen. Parents who impose "grounding" on children tend to impose sanctions that last far too long. Children have a poorly developed pre-frontal cortex so very short groundings (ten minutes, an hour for most severe things) is more effective that longer groundings.

akiselev 5y ago

> Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment... This brought to mind: Years ago when I was a teen, my mom grounded me and took my desktop away for quite a while, which was like a death sentence even back then. Given that it was an oversized cube case and there really wasn't anywhere to lock it away, I would always just grab it after school and keep using it until she got home. Problem is, she put the computer next to the door so I had to resort to locking the second lock to give myself time to put it back when she got home. I didn't think about it at the time but I. was being blatantly obvious and she clued me in years later that she knew what I was doing from the beginning. Punishments don't have to be all or nothing, they can be like locks: they won't stop the determined, but they will stop the opportunists. The punishment is the inconvenience of the workaround and often has the added benefit that enforcement requires spending more time with them. </parenting "advice" from a coddled nonparent>

DanBC 5y ago

> we had to re-think the whole grounding from devices during pandemic because that was suicide to a teen. Parents who impose "grounding" on children tend to impose sanctions that last far too long. Children have a poorly developed pre-frontal cortex so very short groundings (ten minutes, an hour for most severe things) is more effective that longer groundings.