Parenting Teens: The Modern Teen Connection
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 at 12:00AM A friend mentioned that her family uses four cars to run their lives. I though that was a little excessive until I realized we have 3 cars and pay about a third of the insurance on a fourth.(Maybe even less than a third, that particular semi-adult is becoming more adult and less semi).
Between all of us, we have 5 cell phones, one land line and two extensions, 5 computers of one type or another, 2 TVs (small by modern standards or so we have been informed, either of them hang from the wall), Tivo on one of them, 2 games systems and a separate not hooked up to anything smallish TV for the game systems (we are sadly uncool in the game systems department), at least 3 MP3 players floating around, several CD players and at least one digital camera.
All the children have Facebook accounts, multiple personal e-mail accounts, and one has her own blog. Another is running out of computer space for her schoolwork because of all the songs she has stored. The term external hard drive had been mentioned in my presence. I asked if her computer had a delete function. I remain a sadly uncool parent. I have three active e-mail accounts myself!
Our children do not see us at the epitome of electronic/car blessedness but as a decidedly underpowered family. I am kinda stunned to see all the stuff we use just to communicate, travel or to entertain ourselves.
My parents reared a passel of kids with two cars (even though mom didn’t drive), one phone with two extensions…..that’s pretty much it.
Oh I forgot two TVs (with cable) and some tape recorders and later cassette players. I think there might have been a stereo or two also.
I have no idea how my parents managed.
View Printer Friendly Version
Reader Comments (4)
I feel so sorry for my parents. No cell phones back in the day and three teenage girls driving all over the place....yikes! Thank God for technology.
I could have written this post.
With the exception of my folks. We had one television on which to watch the one English channel. It aired from noon to midnight except on Saturdays when there were cartoons from 7am-noon and a horror flick from midnight to 2AM.
I guess we suffered some sort of technology deprivation back then. Might explain a few things, eh?
Wow, that really puts it into perspective. I think I will make a list and give it to my kids and hopefully make things a little clearer to them.
This article really does shed some perspective on how times have changed. It's all pretty overwhelming when you break it down like that.