This is a post I wrote on my own blog a few months back. I thought it would fit nicely here with the dadomatic community. If you have children and you let them play on social media websites, or are wondering what to do because your child is asking for a Facebook/Twitter/Google Plus account, this …
Continue reading Are You Old Enough For Facebook?The other day I was surfing around inside Facebook and saw a post that was created by my 14-yr old daughter. One of her older high-school friends made a comment on her post and in the comment she said this, “…I want to no all about it…”. Â I made the remark to my daughter how …
Continue reading Facebook Grammar
Cross posted from my social media blog-its a relevant discussion for this audience too. As the parent of one tween (10.5 who will be 11 in two months) and an 8.5 who wants to do what her big sister does – social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc., are sources of big concern for me …
Continue reading (My) Tween(s) and Social NetworkingIn this age of digital images, how many of you still have boxes of family photos hiding in the darkest corners of your least visited closets? Â With the near ubiquity of digital photography, for many of us, our family memories have come out of the closet and have moved onto hard drives and online services …
Continue reading A Boy And His Dog… And A Pet Peeve About Digital Photography“I hate those quizzes dad.” Â That’s what my 10 year old told me. Â He got a Facebook account for Christmas and his friends immediately started sending him Facebook quizzes and polls. Â You know what I am talking about… “which garden tool are you?” Â and “So-and-so just took a quiz to see how smart you are. …
Continue reading Kids Are More Tech-Savvy, But Does That Make Them Smarter?As a kid, do you remember the time you took a big old magnifying glass and used it to concentrate a beam of sunlight to try and start a fire? Â More often than not, the object of your makeshift laser weapon – a dry leaf, a slip of paper, or, if you were really daring, …
Continue reading The World’s Biggest Magnifying Glass (and the fires it starts)Once again the Cast of Dads go off on several tangents, from lawn-mowing wives to touch screen computing, and hand-written thank you notes, we leave few stones unturned in this week’s Podcast. Topics discussed in this episode include: Wives mowing the lawn Thank You Notes Resurrection of hand written letters Teaching writing in school Dragon …
Continue reading Cast of Dads #19: U CAN Touch This!Next??. ?Next. Next. Whoa! NEXT! Next. Hey now! Next. Next. Next…  If you have been clicking on “next” a lot lately, perhaps it is because you have been one of the millions of Internet users checking out the latest on-line fetish fad, Chatroulette.  If you live in a cave and haven’t yet heard of Chatroulette Jon …
Continue reading From Chatroulette To Dadroulette!Sex… is not what this post is about.  No birds and bees here.  Instead I want to talk about the “other” conversation to have with your kids as they approach the age of puberty and start to become young adults.  That is the talk about privacy and managing with common sense the digital trails we …
Continue reading Having “That†Conversation With Your Kids…“It’s ten o’clock… do you know where your children are?”  In the days before mobile phones and text messaging, that was a line in a frequently broadcast Public Service Announcement.  Even in our connected world today, as parents we still DO want to know where our children are… all the time.  Now we have the …
Continue reading Foursquare And Seven Days Ago…This morning I was browsing Facebook and saw that my youngest daughter had posted pictures of her High School Prom. This is a new experience for me, both my daughters live in the UK and when I was in High School we didn’t have proms – they being a strictly American experience. Both my daughters …
Continue reading Daddies Little Girl Goes To PromSmile! You’re on not-so-candid camera! As parents it is our god given right to document the lives of our children. It is more than a right, it is an obligation. Actually, for many it is more than a obligation, it is an obsession! From the moment of our child’s birth we are compelled to capture …
Continue reading Parents or Paparazzi???Quite a bit has been written about the risks of our children being a bit too transparent with their lives online. Horror stories abound about the perils of kids posting embarrassing or incriminating pictures on their MySpace and Facebook pages. Primetime news shows are giving significant air time to controversial trends such as tweens and …
Continue reading TransPARENTcy!Phone Home! In this age of email, text and instant messages, it is easy to forget the power of your voice. It is easy to forget the simplicity and impact of a phone call. We are spoiled by the instant connections we make online. Spoiled by the ability to tell the world what we are …
Continue reading ET Had It Right: Phone Home!I have two daughters. One 17 the other just turned 20. We have lived apart for 16 years. Over those years our ability to remain an active part of each others lives has faced many challenges. When we were first parted, I lived in the next town, I saw them every weekend, and sometimes during …
Continue reading Staying in touch with teens over time & distance