Who else wishes that sometimes the easiest way to communicate with the teenagers wasn’t to send them a text even when you’re in the same house?

I am like the land of no fun in our house some days I think. And today I’m sure I will be even more because I decided it’s time for a mom vent. We’re allowed even as step parents, right? Where is my parental “dislike button” that solves all problems instantly in forever LOL? What??? There is no magic wand or button? No magic app? Come on! So not fair!

Take video games. I really don’t like video games, they have never intrigued me. I am definitely considered square as a result by the males in my house. What they don’t seem to get is I have less of a problem with video games, when things happen in moderation. But if you have a teen who is super into gaming, moderation goes right out the window. And all fairness to teenagers, I have seen adults do the same thing. It’s like they get sucked in and their brains with it.

And if left to their own devices kids totally into video games will literally game an entire day away or until their eyeballs bleed, whichever happens first. And some times they don’t even stop to eat or have anything to drink. And after a couple hours straight, they can get downright cranky, yelling at the TV screen and so on. And of course there is that social aspect where all the teens meet in their virtual world of gaming and talk to each other through their headphones. So how do you strike a balance without being the bad guy?

Which is why when to comes to videogames I think a bank of hours works best. When the kid goes through the hours it’s their time management lesson. Sounds harsh but I almost miss the good old days when they went outside or read a book or had an actual conversation.

Next up? Social media/chat programs.

A friend of mine commented recently on how she thinks teenagers today are actually missing out on old school dating rituals for lack of a better description. She talked about the “good old days” when you took your girlfriends to check out a guy or vice versa, the furtive late night phone calls, and the fact that we have such awesome music to choose from growing up!

Here, I found it. This is what she said:

To that I add they are missing out on the talking and having actual conversations that enable them to truly get to know each other because all they do is TEXT. And I also wonder if that has something to do with how dates are planned now, which is often fairly last minute.

There are a million chat and text programs and apps out there. They change as quickly as clothing styles and hairstyles. Apps come in apps fall out of fashion. Do you really know what your kids are doing on any of these apps or programs?

Where is the balance of giving them their privacy but wanting them to be safe? Some parents are overly involved in this aspect of their kids lives and some rival Captain Oblivious in this area. Where is the middle ground?

Today a member of a parenting group I belong to posted what I am about to post. I will warn you it’s a little graphic, but it’s reality. Here it is:

Unfortunately she’s not just whistling Dixie. How do you strike a balance without being the parental hate police? Tweens and teens are by nature secretive. They also think they know everything.

I am all for electronics being taken out of the bedrooms at night. I can only control what goes on in my house, I can’t control what goes on in the houses of the kids my kid is friends with. And for the most part I’m really lucky he knows good kids. But still….these programs and apps are worrisome.

A lot of these chat things the tweens and teens use promote ugliness like cyber bullying. I’ve seen it I know it happens. One website I find absolutely vile and astounding that any parent would allow their kids to have is an account on ask.FM.

And then there is what kids post. The young teen girls in particular don’t get the whole Lolita of it all. But then again you have to look at what some of the parents are posting. No one gets it some days.

Maybe I’m more aware of a lot of this because I’ve been a blogger for a few years. Maybe I’m more aware of some of this is because as an adult I was cyberbullied for a few months straight. Or maybe I just think too much and I shouldn’t post this post after all…

Someone pointed out this web article:

Crosswalk.com 9 Most Dangerous Apps for Kids

Here is the list they compiled:

Whisper , YikYak, kik ,ChatRoulette , Omegle,snap chat, Tinder (This app, and similar apps such as Down, Skout, Pure, Blendr are all about the hook up), Poof (hides apps on your phone screen),

Now this website is a faith based one, which isn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but they aren’t necessarily wrong about raising awareness of apps and what they do. I don’t see Vine as particularly harmful, either.

They left off Ask.fm . Seriously that site is vile. An article released today indicates they are trying to “clean up their act”:

Ask.FM cleans up its act Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY 9:04 a.m. EST January 15, 2015

LOS ANGELES — In the five months since Ask.com has taken over the controversial anonymous app Ask.FM, usage has dropped as the new owner has tried to clean up practices.

From its peak of 200 million users before Ask bought Ask.FM last summer, the app now has 150 million monthly users. Ask.com CEO Doug Leeds doesn’t mind.

“We’re in it for the long haul. We’ll get great growth when we get the message that it’s now a safe place to be,” he says.

With the app, used heavily by teens around the globe, you can anonymously ask people questions, ranging from “Do you think I’m cute?” to “why are you so unpopular?”

Before IAC unit Ask.com bought Ask.FM, the Latvia-based app was targeted by several district attorneys after teens committed suicide, apparently after bullying from users of the app.

Tech4Mommies lists their problem app list as Poof or Hide App, SnapChat, Whisper, Kik, YikYak, Tinder, Vine, and Ask.fm. CheckupNewsRoom.com lists their problem app list as: YikYak, SnapChat, Kik, Poof, Omegle, Whisper, and Down. EducateEmpowerKid.org lists as their list Tinder, SnapChat, Blendr, Kik, Whisper, Ask.fm, YikYak, Poof, Omegle, Down.

My take away is it doesn’t matter if it’s a faith-based website or just a parent-centric website, there is a commonality in as much as the list of what problem apps are. So are we paying attention to these things? Are we being too laissez faire or too hypervigilant? Or none of the above? And what are our schools doing really? Are they leaving this up to us as parents or are they really in fact an active partner in figuring this all out? As far as schools go, I’m leaning a little more towards the lip service category. It’s like cyber bullying – they seem talk a good game and have “policies” but what do they really do?

I also found this interesting:

“Facebook Is Dead To Us”: What Teens Think About 11 Of The Biggest Social Networks Tuesday, January 13, 2015 by Ari Herstand

Related to above:

Medium.com: A Teenager’s View on Social Media Written by an actual teen

Medium.com: An Old Fogey’s Analysis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media

I discovered a website that seems to make things pretty pretty balanced. It’s called ConnectSafely.org . It’s geared towards teens, parents, and educators.

The thing is this: we want to encourage kids to make smart choices. We want to keep the lines of communication open as well. The problem is we’re talking about tweens and teens and they don’t want to talk to us a lot of the time. Get real ……did you want to talk to your parents about stuff you didn’t want to talk to your parents about it when you were their age?

It’s frustrating. I am the first person to admit it. And I have been at this parenting game a lot fewer years than a lot of the rest of you out there. How do you strike the balance? A lot of that balance has to do with being a friend versus being a parent. Add to that when your kids come in contact with the parenting styles of their friends’ parents. And what works and some families doesn’t necessarily work in others.

You can’t wrap your kids and cotton wool and you can’t shield them from the world. They have to experience life on their own terms, and one of the hard things I’m learning about being a parent is trusting them and letting them go enough to do that. You can provide them with a good moral compass, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to shield them from the inappropriate in life. It’s part of life, after all.

To me, I keep coming back to balance and moderation. I also have to be accepting of the things that I don’t like and what my teenager doesn’t like that I don’t like. Somewhere in the middle I think lies the answer. Rules and common sense don’t hurt either.

But as parents we can’t be ostriches a stick our heads in the sand and say. “La la la la this isn’t happening” any more than we can be the parent police. So I guess as much as it can be uncomfortable for both sides of the fence as in teens and parents, it’s an ongoing work in progress and necessary conversation isn’t it?

I will close by saying I’m a modern woman with an old-fashioned side I’m discovering when to comes to parenting. I’m not the cool parent who going to say let’s have a co-ed sleepover I think that’s bunk and to an extent asking for trouble. I am the parent who is going to ask questions, because in as much as anything else it’s how I learn about things….not just the inner workings of the teenage mind.

I try not to be the Parental Spanish Inquisition but when you’re dealing with teenagers sometimes everything is the Parental Spanish Inquisition. And in a way this is a brave new world for me because growing up there was a lot I did not feel like I could talk to my parents about safely, so I have to learn how to talk to kids about certain things.

The flip side of course is sometimes teenagers could give their parents less of a hard time. I know, I know. That is the age old battle time in memoriam isn’t it?

Thanks for stopping by.