The Unfortunate Side Effects of Instant Communication

We are in an age where parents are calling the office about a grade their teacher entered 2 minutes ago, or about a child that they claim was not nice to their child only 1 minute prior on the playground.  How does this happen?  The answer is technology.  Kids and parents in today’s society are texting and emailing throughout the school day.  Instant communication is too tempting for us as parents (myself being one), and is a way for us to wirelessly go to school with our children, not realizing that it is actually unhealthy and detrimental.  We feel as though we are helping, but we are not. The problem is, our children are not learning to get through the school day on their own the way we did.  There are many important social skills we all learned as children in managing our way through a school day.  They are not learning how to deal with problems, but rather how to have their parents deal for them.  Rather than helping our kids respond to speed bumps in life, we are frantically as parents trying to stay one step ahead of them in an attempt to remove the speed bumps before they even get to them.  The question then becomes, is that the right goal?  Do we want our children to learn how to manage life's speed bumps and assist them with processing that, or do we want to work to ensure they never hit any speed bumps?  The temptation is to do the latter, and as children get older, they become less equipped to deal with what life has for them.  Kids emailing and texting unnoticed in class is rampant not just in public and private schools, but everywhere.  Much of the email and texting going on in schools is actually between the child and their parents.  One study showed that 66% of teens report that they've received texts from their parents, even when their parents know they're in class (fastcompany.com). 

Please help us, but much more important, please help your child, by being firm and not allowing them to communicate via text or email during the school day.  Practice restraint by not emailing or texting them during the day as well.  This is a valuable time in your child’s life to learn independence, to learn to manage their school day, and to learn about how to deal with daily interactions, conflict, or discomfort without having someone without all of the information instantly come to their rescue.  As a parent myself, I know this is challenging.  Instinctively we want to protect and even rescue our children, and thus it is not apparent how this practice is actually hurting the growth of our children rather than helping.

Stay tuned also for what will be a “technology-free” couple of days connected with the spring Logic and Rhetoric Relationship Conference!  We are looking forward to discovering (both us and the students) what else is in our day when uninhibited by technology!  A new study from researchers at the University of Waterloo (sciencedaily.com) suggests that an over-reliance on smartphones can lead to "lazy thinking."  Researchers say that their findings suggest an association between heavy smartphone use and lowered intelligence; they also suggest that a reliance on smartphones may have consequences for an aging population.  We are looking forward to incorporating these tech-free days into the relationship conference!   

Though we have specific rules about technology on campus, the fact of the matter is without the parental support we cannot control this.  A week does not go by where a parent doesn’t share a text or email communication between them and their child that took place during the school day, even during class.  Let’s partner together to stop this trend.  Our children will benefit as they grow up and learn to become more independent, which is an important lesson for our children.

Thank you for all you do to support our school and our mission!

Please also note, because of the rapid advancement in technology, we have added a clarification to our technology agreement and Student and Parent Handbook that students are not permitted to have "Smart Watches" on campus. 

References:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150305110546.htm
http://www.fastcompany.com/1687648/whos-texting-your-kids-class-66-time-parents