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While everyone else in my family was stuffing themselves with turkey stateside, I was attending a public relations conference in Munich. The topic was the role Web-based audio and video PR will play in the future. I didn't learn anything new, but I did realize we are all on a path of no return. The World Wide Web, and all its technical wizardry, is here to stay.
I'm a wee bit of a technophobe. It's not entirely true, but I tend to view gadgetry as an ersatz for truly living. So whenever someone approaches me with anything that can only be enjoyed with a plug or batteries, I falter and resist.
Life for our children looks a lot different than it did for us as we grew up. They have to learn how to deal with computers one way or the other.
Enter Adina's Deck, a Nancy Drew meets Ghostwriter teenage foursome who solve cyber-mysteries at school. Whether it's online dating, plagarism or cyber-bullying, this series addresses some real-life issues like no other show I've seen.
Director and producer Debbie Heimowitz sent me the first three in her series (the others are pending financing). Even my son, who tends to grow impatient with 'real-life' programming, as opposed to cartoons, loved it. My daughter, who is taking a short three-hour course about how to use the Internet tomorrow, enjoyed the themes throughout the series, too. It makes her feel grown up to type on a keyboard, like her mom. She has grown so fond of my old laptop that I've promised to give it to her if she keeps up her grades this year.
Thankfully, we have insightful directors such as Debbie to lean on when our children's minds seem filled with online chatter. A group of positive role models, the clan in Adina's Deck fosters honesty, integrity, and the type of problem-solving lacking in most television programming today. Recommended for children ages 8 to 13, this award-winning series promises to help us parents unlock the mysteries of today's tweens with a nice dose of ethics tossed in!
Francie Dalton made me laugh. And she made me cringe. Her book, Versatility: How to Optimize Interactions When 7 workplace Behaviors Are at Their Worst, is a chilling look at seven personality types. Six are not desirable; the seventh is. With witty cartoon characters and accurate, if aggregated, examples of personalities we all face, Ms. Dalton lays out the challenges and drawbacks of each:
The Commander
The Drifter
The Attacker
The Pleaser
The Performer
The Advoider
The Analytical
The Achiever
Of course, everyone wants to be considered effective, knowledgeable, perceptive, constructive, generous and wise. Those are the traits of the so-called Achiever. I found myself resisting some of what she said because it used stereotypes to work with people. In reality, we are a pool of the above personalities. Some are more dominant than others. In all fairness, Ms. Dalton admits that she is categorizing people to make a point: the workplace environment does not always run smoothly based on people's annoying behavior. But you can harmonize with your environment (thus, the Chameleon's Edge) to maximize communication and, ultimately, improve the workplace environment by feeding into people's strengths while guiding their weaknesses out the door.
DisneyFamily.com conducted an online survey with over 11,000 parents about digital gadget usage amongst children. Check this out:
• Forty percent of respondents’ children have cell phones. Of those, 36% are responsible for paying all or part of their cell phone bill.
• Forty-eight percent of respondents age 25 – 34 said their child(ren) began using a cell phone at age five or younger.
• While 80% of respondents are worried about online safety, 26% of respondents’ children age eight or younger are allowed to access the internet alone.
• Eighty-one percent of respondents’ children have provided a personal email address to register for a site online; 69% have uploaded a photo online and 59% have used online chat/instant messaging.
• Forty-nine percent of respondents identified the internet as their first source of information about online safety.
Call me crazy, but these numbers scare me. I've seen the look in my kid's eye when she sees my cell phone. "Can I play a video game on it?" She loves our babysitter because her cell phone is so cool and has the best games.
Oh my.
Looking for the perfect stocking stuffer for your kids? Forget all that candy and consider a box of Emergen-C Kidz. The box was designed by kids themselves. Check out one of the boxes below.
Emergen-C Kidz complete multi-vitamin formula contains a whopping 24 essential nutrients, choline, which supports healthy brain function, and has 500mg of Vitamin C to help kids stay healthy year round. Emergen-C has no artificial flavors.*
At Emergen-C we know what vitamins kid’s bodies need, but only kids can tell us what they like. Designed for kids by kids, Emergen-C Kidz is perfect to toss in a lunch box or serve up as an after-school refreshment. Kids love to mix it up, watch it fizz up and gulp it down!
About the box and name designers:
The creative product name winners include Austin Blase, age 8, of Duluth, Georgia for Orange Pineapple Explosion and Bernadine Macedo, age 8, of Los Angeles for Strawnanaberry. The three kids whose drawings inspired the new package design include Marisa Rodriguez, age 9, of Rosemead, California for Cherry Yumberry; Alessandra Rios, age 8, of Pasadena, California for Strawnanaberry Blast; and Jake Mowery, age 12, of Cumming, Georgia for Orange Pineapple Explosion. The winner for best name and best artwork for each flavor was rewarded with a prize package of $1,000 to be donated to their school’s reading, math or science program . All participating kids received a complimentary sport sling bag.
The sound of coloring filled the kitchen air. It was concentrated work. Santa was coming soon, and the kids had to be prepared. A list, a wish, a hope, and a dream.
My children, ages 7 and 9 1/2, believe in Santa Claus.
Macy's is partnering with Make-A-Wish foundation. For every letter to Santa they receive in their designated mailbox in Macy's stores nationwide, Macy's will donate to the Make-A-Wish foundation.
In preparing for this post, the folks at Macy's reminded me of the story Virginia O'Hanlon who wrote to New York Sun editor Francis P. Church in 1897 to ask if there truly was a Santa Claus. The story reminds me of the innocence my children still possess - the unjaded, unabashed joy of belief and wonder.
The most poignant part of the editor's kind response reads:
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus...The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.
So it got me to thinking about all the things we believe in that we cannot see. Apart from the obvious (God), we also cannot see music, oxygen or happiness. We can only see the effects of these things. But they are as real as our favorite tune, the air we breathe, and the feeling on Christmas morning when our sleepy-eyed children awaken to the magic of love, generosity, and forgiveness.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. May he reside in your heart this day and always...
According to the Washington Post, scientists have successfully reconstructed 2/3 of the wooly mammoth genome. Wow. Wonder if Manfred from ICE AGE fame will be lumbering down the path at the zoo when I take the grandkids in thirty years...
We all want our kids to grow up to be happy individuals. Yet, everytime I tell them "No, you can't watch TV for another consecutive hour. Get up, go to the door, and discover the oxygen outside this house," they balk. Like breathe fresh air, people, and stop begging me to fulfill your digital addiction (slight hypocrasy aside - I mean I live from my computer work, ok?)
Thanks be to John P. Robinson and sociologist pal Steven Martin. No joke. After culling through 34 years of time-diary data, they discovered what we moms already know.
Unhappy people watch more TV.
Now, that's not to say that TV makes you unhappy. I've been known to hunker down once a week to watch my reality show about young singing talents behind the scenes. TV consumption just has no lasting benefits (and if you've ever indulged in too many chips while watching the playoffs, you'll know which lasting effects that can have on you...).
So I'm back to my point about limiting my kids' TV viewing. It doesn't make you happy. And neither do the false advertising promises fulfill their long-term vision of what happy people look like.
Amen John P. and company. Glad to know you're on our side.
How many of us moms rely on gadgets to grow the kids? I'm not sure. Yes, I have a cell phone, which I use for business so my mobile office makes me feel less guilty whilst standing on the soccer field sidelines cheering for my kids instead of working on behalf of clients. Other than that, I don't use a digital calendar because, quite frankly, I don't know how to get our WLAN working. So we've resorted to the paper kind you get for free at year-end when companies unleash their marketing tools to the kitchen walls across the nation.
Or PDA's. Nope, don't use one of those since I sold my Palm Pilot for a song on eBay.
But I do use a GPS when I drive my husband's car. But that's usually for business because my driving radius for the kids involves jaunts to the grocery store, athletic field or occasional stray friend's house who forgot where he lives and thinks lunch at our house is cooler anyway.
So I don't mother digitally. I wouldn't know how. Does hiding the remote control from the children so they limit their TV viewing count?
Weigh in. I want to know.
