Not me- I'm failing at Twitter and in general my i-pad....I love my iphone, facebook but have a limit to how many social media things I can support. It is the kids on instagram. I know this shocks some of you but it is what it is and I'm sharing this as it is my life. And we know I'm far from perfect and want to share what can happen....
Parenting is the hardest job Joe and I have and the most rewarding. Keeping up with technology does make it harder. It isn't much different than the phone rules that use to happen (friend reminded me how she wasn't allowed to call boys before a certain age....hmmmm should I not be letting Clare "follow" or whatever you do on instagram boys...should it be girls only...... For those of you not using social media you won't understand.
So the kids have our old i-phones. They don't have i-touches, they don't have phones. We've talked about when we understand why many children our children's ages have them- just not for us yet. We have one lap top for the kids that they share. We do let them borrow our lap tops. We no longer have a PC station. I do have an ipad they like to borrow too. We have a kindle with no other option other than reading and some games. They use the iphones with wireless primarily for games..... They became obsessed with instagram accessing via the ipad primarily. They are competitive and started a contest about getting the most likes. I was watching and viewing the accounts- pretty innocent stuff but still it didn't feel right. One day I saw a post by clare that said- kix me, I'm bored. Well that set me off. No one should be bored in my house. (Clare is a good kid- great reviews from teachers, works hard, great grades, really into her sports lately- does double practices with Joe's teams, helps out as needed- do I wish she kept her room cleaner- yes but....) So she explained that kix me is a new texting application/ap so I had to check that out....yes one more thing. Sigh....Turns out the contest they were in landed them with each over 500 followers. 500! They don't know 500 people......their accounts were open to the public and random people with no name or "bios" or history were following my kids. YIKES!
So last Friday I deleted all the aps on the ipad and collected the old iphones and limited computer time. We called a family dinner and sat around the table and deleted accounts and started fresh. It wasn't easy for my kids, it was difficult to actually delete accounts- love my IT techy husband....we've started over. We did give them new instagram accounts so don't be surprised if my child reaches out to your child as I heard in Yoga class yesterday! I'm happy to know this child tells his mother when people he doesnt' know well ask to follow him. I was pleased I was able to say to my child I knew she was following this "boy". They now know the rules and they whys- we talked about stranger danger still being part of the Life on Newark-Granville Road isn't that much different than when the LeFevres or Farris lived here....it is just faster and presented in a different way and still requires all of the support and help from our friends and family. Thanks for reading!
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