Using technology to communicate with your teen

Sep 20th, 2008 | By grantgriffiths | Category: Advice

I have 4 sons. Oldest just got married this summer and is living in Florida with his new wife. They will be coming home next mouth so he can defend his Masters project and be done with that. One of our other sons is in his last year of nursing school and he is getting married next summer. (Can you saying feeling a bit old right now)?

Another one of our sons lives at home with us as he has special needs. And yet another one is in high school. He, as we like to refer to him as, is Mr. Social. I guess we got off lucky with the others, they weren’t nearly as social in high school as this one. It might be because he is the youngest and had the opportunity to grow up around 3 older brothers. Whatever the reason, it is just the way it is.

One of the challenges of having high school aged children is keeping in touch with them. Especially when they are busy with those extra activities they do in school. From band to working with computers at school. Which this one does a lot. What I had to decide was, how do I give him the “controlled” freedom to do those things which will allow him to grow as a young man. And at the same time, keep in touch with him.

I did not want to be one of those parents who called all the time to check-in on him to see what he was doing and where he was. But, I needed some way to keep in touch. To do just what I needed to do to keep track of him and to check-in on him. The answer was quite simple. Text messages.

He has an iPhone, I have an iPhone. Yes I could call. But lets face it. Children these days live and breathe with text messages. I wanted to be able to keep in touch and use the method that teens are using. So, I text him. And you know what, he replies and even will send me a text before I even have to ask what he is doing or where he is at.

It is easy to complain about our teens not wanting to communicate with us. Lets face it, we didn’t communicate with our own parents when we were teens like we should have. Take advantage of all of the way our teens communicate with each other. Use those same methods to communicate with them. You might be amazed. First, they might think you are cool because you can actually text and even send an email. And second, you will get a response too.

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  • I would also support any mean of communications ... kids are eager to use new technologies for communicating with friends, simply because that's is "Kewl" . And if is is also cool to communicate with Moms and Dad, that even better, however we have to adjust to theirs fast evolving technologies :)

    maybe we can have a @twitterkids the same way we have @twittermoms and @twitterdads to have a channel between the youngster and the helder !

    w/ care
    +Michel
  • Texting is also great because you can get your son in the middle of class. Not that I recommend bombarding him when he is in the middle of a lecture on differential equations...but this is newfound connection, and dare I say power, to go where no parent could go before? That CB radio would not have cut it, eh Paul? (I am a little annoyed at our giant public high school this week so I am feeling even more anarchistic than usual.)
  • CB, OMG are we aging ourselves or what. And Jules you are exactly correct. If you want to communicate and get your teens attention, use what they use. And for goodness sake, don't embarrass them in front of their peers. Thanks for commenting you two and I hope we can keep the conversation going.
  • Chris,

    We moved to Dublin where our (now teenage) sons were 6, 9, and 12. Rejected idea of kids with cell phones at the outset and were immediately pushed over for the oldest, partly for the reasons you outline. When you text a kid you fit in the flow of his day and preferred comms. Imagine your son hanging out with a bunch of friends and you call him...how annoying. "Is that your dad calling you AGAIN?" Imagine instead texting him...no one knows it is you. It might be that cute girl he's been mooning over. His social cred is not affected and could even go up for the mere fact of your text.

    The other reason we went quickly kid-mobile was safety. The very first weekend my oldest boy got an invite to meet a friend after school, we got a call from the friend saying he could not find our son. This was in the middle of Dublin. Can you spell panic? The phone, for urban dwellers in a foreign country, became a necessity. We would have been negligent parents if we did not give him that way of keeping in touch.

    Anyway, good post and good thoughts.
  • We just talked about this topic recently with neighbors who have a freshman in college and a junior on high school. Their kids won't answer the phone when you call, but they'll text you back within minutes. We find that to be less true with our 11 and 14 year olds, but I think it's only a matter of time. At least we aren't calling them on a CB radio (like my parents did with me)!
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