I am the only child of parents born in the early 40's: Dads carried hankies, moms wore stockings and manners were grilled into my generation like grease down the neck of a foi gras goose. We said please and thank you, wrote thank you notes, replied promptly to invitations, called any adult Mr or Mrs, and did what those adults asked without (too much) whining. We showed respect for our peers and our elders.
First up in my series of observations about our lack of Etiquette: Screen Addiction. (Or is it social media addiction?)
When it came to screens, there was one: a TV. It was a giant box, often a stand-alone piece of furniture and the youngest person in the room was the remote, getting up to change the volume or channel as needed. sometimes we even had a black and white tv from the "old days" when mom and dad were first married. We had 5 TV channels and lived for Saturday mornings when we could flip between 3 of those channels and watch cartoons for three or sometimes even four whole hours at once.
We didn't dream of not talking to our friends' parents when we were at their home, and if you sat quietly, not looking at anyone in the eye at the dinner table, you were one of a few things: in trouble, sick, or sad. The internet was far from invented, handheld anything was a Walkman with cassette tapes and why on earth would you bring it to the table? You'd get shot! Yet someplace in between Carol Brady sighing "oh Marcia" and Ross and Rachel having a baby, it appears that a ton of these kids that go by the label Generation X (and I'm a Gen X-er) completely forgot those manners. Worse yet, they forgot to teach them to their kids.
I love this photo because it describes so much of what I see lately. Dear God people, put down the phone and interact! I am probably pretty guilty of being on FB a bit more than I need to, falling asleep to surfing through Pinterest, or binge posting meme's, but there are few things worse than seeing a table with a family in a restaurant where they are all on their phones, completely silent. Not a word, someone has on headphones, the only time they talk is to the waitress. We have a rule in our family that there are no screens at the table. The kids have a bag of coloring books and the tools to color with rotate from colored pencils to crayons to markers. The coloring books rotate too-- I keep 2 magazine holders on the laundry room counter with a wide variety of activity books and plain paper in them for them to pick. The bag is a cute one from the dollar bin at Target. When it breaks like the first one did, we just pick up a new one. They are so used to this that they look at the kids with screens like something's odd with THEM. I have even had my kids ask me whey the other kids don't want to talk to their parents. I say I don't know and then go back to coloring Spiderman and chatting about hockey practice or who had the better game of four square at recess.
It does seem easy to entertain your kids at a restaurant with video games or other screen-intense thing so you can have a moment to talk with your spouse (or not). And I've done it twice I can think of-- once when, recently, my son kept interrupting me during an important conversation at breakfast where I had no other choice and had already searched the 400 page Chuck the Truck book for a maze that was easy enough for him to do yet hard enough to take him the whole conversation. The other was when we were out with friends and the other boy there was being mean to my son-- I did it because we weren't ready to go yet and he had basically crawled into my lap on the verge of tears. Both times, when we left, the kids said to me "That was just a special treat, right?" They know. Typically they don't ask for screens at the table. Or in the car (we don't have a DVD player in the car). They DO have iPods. iPod, not iPad. They hold a few TV shows, a few apps, and music and are kept aside for when we travel in the car for over an hour. Otherwise, outside of the house, it's all old school, all the time.
Perhaps my biggest complaint with screens at the table is that the kids are in your house, little, wanting to talk to you, wanting to be seen with you, for only so long. My baby has just really gotten the grasp of the word "No" and for sure has on her "sassy pants" and I realize she isn't the little baby girl she was a year ago. My middle guy will climb into my lap for only so much longer and my big guy I know is nearing the cusp of not kissing me in front of his friends. And the dinner table is a place for conversation, for talking about our days, for planning tomorrows, for being together. Ok, I admit that the family sit-down is fast approaching extinction along with proper use of the word "well". We still manage a few times a week to gather all 5 of us and the kids and I aim for it every day we can. Even if it's pizza, the tv is off, the phones are on the island or turned face down, texts don't get answered. We are all present in the moment.
I'm trying to teach my kids that they need to know how to speak to each other, to Ed and I, to have simple table manners. How can your child ask you to pass the potatoes if you have your nose in the Huffington Post? Think how your parents would have reacted if you sat playing Minecraft while mom dished up the pot roast. I can tell you right now that my device would have been under a car tire faster than you could "like" a post about spending time with family! With all that we do as American moms these days, for the sanity of society, get the kids a restaurant bag and put phones in pockets or face down. I was wondering what the kids would do as teens... perhaps I will do another post in 9 years when I have 2 of them. Remind me to let you know what we do then, ok? Then again, they could just do what we all did: BE with each other and interact. There's a novel idea.
The other side of this argument is that the screens are just far to interesting to put down. We aren't just looking at ads and videos of cats jumping into boxes, we're literally changing the world. Case in point, Egypt. Social revolution via Twitter. Second case in point, the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS, bringing awareness and raising money like wildfire for an illness few adults, let alone kids, new anything about until they were tagged and challenged. Hashtags, trending, viral videos, breaking news, shopping!-- we can find everything we need in the palm of our hand. The world is there for us to explore and I can read about how spiders are bigger in urban areas while I sit next to you on the couch so why in God's name would I talk to you? Are you going to tell me about the spiders? Probably not. But I can tell you things you won't find in the palm of your hand (though I bet you ten bucks you're reading this blog on your phone, aren't you? Hello irony!). I have facial expression and inflection of tone. Warmth, emotion, reaction to you. Sure we could DISCUSS the spiders but you'd have to put down the phone first. And keep it down.
I read a book a while ago and I seriously need to revisit it: The Winter of Our Disconnect. It's about an Australian single mom of 3 teens who pulls the plug on basically everything for six months. It's non-fiction (my preferred genre) and as a writer herself, Maushart discusses both the pros and the cons of screen exposure. It's a fantastic read for anyone trying to gain better understanding the implications of being "plugged in." It helps you look deeper at the damage technology is making on our societal connections, especially our family connections. Radical unplugging is a concept I have toyed with since reading it and then I wonder... how could I? My cell is the number anyone who matters calls (like school!) or texts. I pay my bills on it and email mom pics of the kids. Heck, I wrote half the post about skunk smell removal on the Blogger App on my phone. It's my alarm clock, my calendar, my weather station, my music. My catalogs, my reward system for the kids, my camera, video camera, star chart, travel agent, diet log, pedometer, phone book, concierge, and coupon book. There must be a happy medium between current use of electronics and complete abstinence. It's a place I want to find and model for my kids as they inch closer to the age of owning a smart phone.
That said, we all should look to find the happy place with our electronics. Think about how your kids are using or not using them. When are we connecting, really connecting with family? What message does it send each other when we would rather stare at Facebook than at each other? I promise not to sigh too loudly when I see the kids engrossed in their iPads at the restaurant tables from now on if you promise to crack out the crayons more often, ok? Good. One step closer to a world free of (predominately) idiots.
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