Tween Sophisticate

There are some differences between my children, not just the obvious ones like one's a boy and one's a girl; one's fourteen and one's ten. There are the communication differences.

Daughter is complexly sophisticated. It started off small, like with the telephone. Like in that she could actually get on the telephone and talk. Unlike Bar Mitzvahzilla who could only get on the phone and say a series of linked together "Uhs." One time one of Husband's sisters called from out of town and asked to speak to Daughter. I handed the phone to her, and, half a bubbly, anecdote-laden hour later, she handed the phone back. She was five.

Lately, though, she's getting into technology. It started with Skype. All the kids at school were going on Skype so that the minute they'd get home from seeing each other all day then they could sit there watching each other all night, typing at their keyboards. Turns out we don't have a webcam, though, so we watched her little friend talking. I saw the parents in the background cleaning the kitchen, the whole house in a panoramic view, and I thought, no way is my house, or the people in it, ready for a viewing audience, like the bickering parents, the food police husband, the surly teenager, dirty dishes. Even if we had a webcam I'd hide it.

So she types her Skyped responses to her friends, but sometimes they all want to pretend that they're all really good typers so they type like this: yiourejhdhiutaryenbj.nm,zhjkjdyfilerhjhjlda. She's having a great time, laughing with headphones on, monopolizing our phone line, and typing gibberish.

Her newest thing? What could it be? What's she seen her mother doing day and night, night and day and scorned every single time I did it? A blog. Of course, it was never interesting if I was doing it. But now that one of her good friends is doing it, it's very, very interesting. So now they're all doing it. A gang of 10-year-old nearly fifth graders out loose in the blogosphere. And I'm following her. And, even worse, she's following me.

And I do want to say that suddenly I'm very, very useful. Make a blogroll? Sure. Change your fonts and colors? I'm your gal. Add a link, a picture, a video? Once scorned, now the recipient of grudging respect.


Am I worried about addiction? Remember, I already have one computer addict in the family. Bar Mitzvahzilla's already had all of his stuff surgically removed for summer and is unhappy about it. The reason I'm not worried? Daughter uses technology to increase her communication with the outside world; Bar Mitzvahzilla uses his to isolate. Big difference.

At this point, I think she'll have taken over the world by age fifteen.

Are you ever amazed at your kids just leaping ahead on technology? Or adopting technology that you're on and suddenly finding a use for you? How about when they go from being just kids to being part of this larger world?