2003-05-26 - 8:54 p.m.
PHONING IT IN
Cellphones have changed my parenting style. At least I think that they have. Maybe the real change is that I have teenagers at home. All I know is that, more than I ever did before, I am phoning my parenting in when I cannot otherwise be available.
Before you make assumptions, it usually is not my job that makes me unavailable. I work part-time and Mr. Philately �split-shifts� with me. Theoretically, I am home when the girls come home from school and, if not, I am home within twenty minutes after that. What makes me unavailable is chaffeuring. I drive to tae kwondo. I drive to ballet. I drive with Kat just for her to get the practice. Some days, I feel as though I live in my car.
Still, I encounter the problem of teenagers coming to an empty house. I do not recall that my mother worried as much about such things but there were more of us and, if necessary, we could spy on each other I suppose. We also provided company for each other, which I suspect mattered more.
If I did not have a cellphone, I might have to settle for leaving notes. I remember days when my own mother left notes. They would say where she was and what she was doing�and, as always, they were signed �me.� She never signed her notes �Mom� because �Mom� was her mother. On the rare occasions I leave notes, I sign them �Mom.� I can�t sign them �me� because that�s my mother. (Kat, of course, points our that her notes will have to be signed �Me� if this crazy logic goes down one more generation.)
One problem with notes is that Kat never looks for them. If I put them at her place at the table where she is supposed to look for notes, she may not look. If I tape them to the inner door at her eye level, she fails to see them. If the note is really important, I tape it to the doorknob so she has to see it when she uses her key but even then I am not sure she reads it before she moves it out of her way.
And so Kat and I have a ritual. She gets off the bus at approximately 2:50 p.m. If I am not home, I call her and let her tell me about her day. I hear what happened in each class and what homework she has. She tells me her plans for the afternoon. If she is the one staying at school, she often calls me.
We �phone it in� other times too. Day-Hay reaches me by phone to tell me all sorts of �news,� including some I don not want to hear such as why she is fighting with her sister and what Kat has done to her that she considers mean. I call Kat to ask her to check if we need milk. Day-Hay, when she is with me, sometimes calls Kat to give her important news or ask if she has eaten yet.
If I did not have the cellphone, I suppose we could still �phone it in.� Before the cellphone, I might have waited at work when I was going to be a bit late so that I could call Kat on the office phone. I might have hunted down pay phones on the road if it were important. But most of the time, I simply would not have the contact.
The truth is I like phoning it in. It�s the next best thing to being there.
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
