We’re all excited about The Lightning Thief, but not just because the movie looks great. These are easily the best books my kids have ever read, and we wholeheartedly recommend them to your kids. We also recommend that you read them with your kids, because they’re that good.
Victoria’s Secret Cotton Mayfair Pajamas, $39
Cotton Cashmere Pants, Ann Taylor, $58
Last night, Wade and I watched “Digital Nation” on Frontline — if you missed this, it’s worth 90 minutes of your life; you can watch the entire documentary at PBS.org. (Online, even! How ironic is that?)
Wade and I had to pause the DVR a couple of times to talk about what we were seeing (omg GEEKS). I wasn’t buying the idea that Second Life is the solution to the virtual office — frankly, I don’t think adding avatars to conference calls will make them any less annoying, or will make me feel any closer to the people I work with but never see in person. Wade, on the other hand, wasn’t really convinced by the high school principal who asserted that his students needed to be proficient in digital technologies because the job market demanded it. Most jobs, he argued — including his — didn’t rely on an extensive knowledge of social networking or texting or video games.
Then he said, “You’re kind of on the fringe, you know, with your job.” And I started to argue with him but then I realized he was right. I hate it when that happens.
Eventually we got to the conversation that every parent who watched the documentary wound up having, the one about kids and digital technology. We talked about how introducing kids to computers and the Internet when they’re young takes all the mystery out of it and makes it less appealing, and then we talked about the idea that the kind of multitasking kids do these days changes their brains and eventually we got to the role of parents in this whole mess.
My theory is that my crazy fringe job, the one that requires that I know all the ins and outs of Facebook and Twitter and Posterous, will make those things forever boring to my kids. Because wouldn’t it be totally embarrassing to have fewer Facebook friends than your mom?
Yes. Yes it would.
And then I got out my soapbox, the one about how parents who refuse to engage with digital technology are putting their kids at risk because seriously, people, learn how Facebook works! Your kids are going to, and it will pay off to be just that much ahead of them.
Plus Facebook is a good way to keep up on the kids’ homework, or at least complain about how much homework there is. (Holla, third grade mom friends! You know what I mean.)
“I don’t want to know how Facebook works,” Wade said. “I’m glad you’ve got that covered.” I told him that if we were dividing up parenting duties, I’d take monitoring our kids’ use of social media if he explained where babies came from.
I’m totally the winner there, by the way. Also, my brother is willing to help with the Facebook part.
So we’re in the middle of this pretty serious conversation about the place of digital technology in the classroom and worrying about the possibility that books will be obsolete for our kids and they will go off to college and play video games ten hours a day because there’s no one there to tell them to stop already! when Henry comes skipping downstairs to tell us that he’s finished reading Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything In It. He tells us the whole story and answers our questions about the book and cannot stop smiling because it’s such a great book and he loved it.
I took him back upstairs and tucked him in, and when I came down Wade said, “That has to make you feel good.”
And I had to admit that yes, it did. Because as much as I love the Internet and everything it offers us, I want my kids to be readers.
Tonight, Henry said, “I want a Twitter account. All my friends have one.” I find that second part hard to believe, but I’m willing to entertain letting the boy get on Twitter — the technology doesn’t scare me at all, and I’m convinced that once he knows that I’m a million years ahead of him in this Internet thing, he’ll go back to reading books in bed at night.
At least that’s what I’m hoping.
Did you watch “Digital Nation?” What did you think?
