I enjoy my kids a lot, and I try to express interest in all of their goings-on. I want to know what they’re up to. I like to hear about what happened in school and who likes who and who cheated in kickball and the dead beetle they saw this morning.
Yes, I love my kids, but, and I must be clear about this, I do not want a moment-by-moment update of their status.
Kids apparently need to keep their parents constantly updated about every moment of their lives. Everything needs to be told. Here is a sample of ten minutes and six seconds of a recent day of mine.
12:01:45: Child 1 reports that she’s hungry.
12:02:17: Child 3 tells me he’s thirsty.
12:02:20: Child 3 now updates his situation to “I’m dying of thirst.”
12:03:21: Child 2 pronounces that he hears a “weird” buzzing sound outside.
12:05:54: Child 1 proclaims that her little toe is “sore.” She walks through the house to report this and points to the offending toe.
12:07:11: Child 3 says the chair he is sitting in is “a little wobbly.”
12:08:14: Child 1 says she is thinking about flowers. Yellow flowers.
12:10:09: Child 2 indicates that the buzzing noise has stopped.
12:10:13: Child 4 (I have three kids, so I’m not sure who Child 4 is) indicates the buzzing may have started again.
12:10:37: Child 2 says Legos are his favorite toy.
12:10:40: Child 3 claims Child 2’s liking of Legos is less than his.
12:11:14: Child 1, while eating a sandwich, reports she doesn’t like sandwiches. (This in direct contrast to a status report yesterday.)
12:11:51: Child 2, knocking on the door of the bathroom, where I’ve hidden myself unsuccessfully, declares he likes the wallpaper in the living room.
As the updates pile up, I feel the camera zooming on my face; my jaw drops and my eyes empty of life; I look like a dad in a typical sugary snack commercial: Victimized, dopey, beaten.
It could not have always been like this. Perhaps children always had this newscaster-like desire, but at one time, they were supposed to seen and not heard, yes?
When you saw the title to this article, you may have been thinking Facebook. That makes sense, since social media tools have a strong status-affirming aspect to them. Maybe that’s the cause of all this, because it seems reasonable that our digital approaches to “status” have bled into our culture’s face-to-face interactions. Video games may also contribute, as these games provide incredibly detailed status information, metrics, and feedback. Maybe the cause is just excessive parenting, with parents setting themselves up by constantly asking barely verbal tots if they like the way things are: “Are you having fun?!” These tots, shrewd as Gollum [1], quickly get the idea that their responses matter greatly.
Whatever the cause, kids are growing up with the idea that cogitating about exactly how they are exactly now is part of existence — but only if you make that information available to others.
Of course, I do hope that my own children’s desire to express their observations about wobbly chairs and nice wallpaper may mean that when the stakes are higher in a few years, they will see me as someone who they can approach to talk over more difficult, weighty topics.
But, alas, I have my limits. Those limits are even more acute when we’re all crammed somewhere, like in a car [2]or a mine. In close quarters, the barrage of updates, often about states of being that would challenge many a philosopher, are insufferable.
So, in cars and mines at least, I have declared war on status updates: My dear children, I love you all. But I’m sorry, I just don’t care what you’re experiencing at every given second. Don’t be distraught. Your parents are only part of the audience of your lives, and our role shrinks exponentially as the years move on. Rest assured, some day you will write your complaints and observations, and out there in your digital social sphere will no doubt be some kindred spirit, a fellow screenager [3], who hearing about your sore toe and the annoying buzzing noises, will think with great deliberation about her or his own aching digits and neighborhood cacophony and show support, sympathy, and perhaps even love by clicking “Like.” You will be affirmed. The great wheel will turn on.
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[6]Scott Warnock [7]
[6]Latest posts by Scott Warnock (Posts [8])
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