My son Jack and I spent most of last Sunday in the kitchen together. Although he has a desk upstairs in his bedroom, and I have one in my office, the kitchen is the place in this house where most of the creative work gets done, whether it’s putting together a pot of soup, writing a blog post, reading manuscripts, or composing a college application essay.
Jack sat on the sofa, tackling one short essay after another on the Common App and various college supplements, while I perched at the table, reading on-line submissions for a panel I’m on next week. Between essays, he would chat with me about possible angles he might take, and then he’d go outside to shoot hoops in the driveway for ten minutes and think things through.
Essentially, Jack’s challenge was the same one every other high school senior we know is wrestling with at the moment: How to present himself in words to complete strangers who will then all-too-briefly compare him to thousands of other unique, gifted kids competing for the same spots in next year’s incoming freshman class. Of course, I have no one with whom to compare my son; I’m reading just one college application, not a thousand. And, as his mother, I’m about as far from an objective judge as I could be. But I was struck, nevertheless, by the depth of his thinking and the range of experiences that have contributed to the construction of his eighteen-year-old self.
By late that night, he’d answered one question with a sonnet, written an honest, thoughtful essay about the difficult but valuable lessons he learned from getting suspended from high school, tried to compress two summers of work he’s passionate about into a thousand characters, and described how his environment growing up has influenced the person he is today.
As Jack emailed his work from his computer across the room to mine, and we zapped edited versions back and forth, I couldn’t help but marvel at the ease and efficiency of the process. Thanks to the wonders of the digital age, we could work independently yet side by side in the coziest, most companionable room in the house. At the same time, I found myself thinking of the role that technology has — and has not — played in shaping the multi-faceted picture of my son that emerged from his day of writing and reflection.
The next day, an article in the Boston Globe, titled “Trying to Gauge the Effects of Growing up Digital” caught my eye. “A few clicks, a couple of swipes,” it begins, “and Bridget Colvin’s four- and-a half year old son, August, was tapping away on an iPad smudged with tiny fingerprints.” The author goes on to point out that “there is little doubt we are seeing only the early stages of a hyper-connected world that is changing childhood.” The images brought the point home: toddlers swiping fingers across board books, expecting the characters to come to “life;” parents handing their iPhones to fussy babies to quiet them; one-year-olds adeptly playing “Baby Birds,” a version of “Angry Birds” for the Pre-K set; three-year-olds skillfully surfing for videos on YouTube; a description of Fisher-Price’s hot new toy, the $15 Laugh & Learn Apptivity Case, an “oversize iPhone case that doubles as a baby rattle.” Since the toy was released last month, Amazon has been unable to keep it in stock; the most popular app for the case, “Where’s Puppy’s Nose,” has been downloaded more than 700,000 times.
My son Jack never was never an “easy” child; active, curious, sensitive, bright, he struggled to find his place in a world that often seemed too overwhelming. Learning how to be at ease in this world, physically and emotionally, and how to live in it fully, has always been his greatest challenge. Confronting that challenge through all the years of his childhood and adolescence, he has suffered, matured, and, in the end, blossomed.
I can’t help but wonder what kind of young adult Jack would be today had he been offered an early escape route from his complicated feelings. How would he have developed had he been able to lose himself in an app at age three or four, instead of having to negotiate the complex emotional and tactile stimulation that life continually threw at him? Would he have learned resilience if he’d been able to tune out the intensity of real experience by tuning in to an animated wonderland instead? What would feel important to him now, if he had spent the hours of his early childhood having interactive adventures in front of computer screens, instead of getting into mischief and experiencing the painful consequences? Who would he be, if he hadn’t been a boy who grew up playing in the backyard with his friends, laying on the couch under an afghan sounding out the words to “Frog and Toad,” learning to do math by collecting a hundred acorns during an autumn walk, and then adding and subtracting them into piles?
I got a disturbing glimpse of the answer to some of those questions a couple of years ago, when Jack became so enamored with video games for a while — and then so good at them – that he eschewed the real world of relationships and heartache and expectations, for a virtual one that he could create and control at will. It seemed like a perfect match up – his lightening quick brain and extraordinary hand-eye coordination made him really, really great at video games. But the more hours he put in in front of the screen, progressing through increasingly difficult levels of exceedingly complicated games, the more his ability and willingness to engage in the challenges of the real world atrophied. He lost the concentration necessary to read deeply, lost interest in homework, quit sports, pulled back from school and friends. For the better part of a difficult year, he was physically home but emotionally absent.
For Jack, making the hard choice to endure the emotional ups and downs of reality rather than escape into an alluring alternative universe, has turned out to be a formative, life-altering experience. He had to figure out how to use technology constructively, of course, as a tool with which to work, rather than as a substitute for life. But, just as important, he also had to figure out how to build a sustaining, meaningful friendship with himself — at the very moment of adolescence when we humans are often most desperate to escape from ourselves. And, because we had moved from the suburbs, where he was surrounded by friends and neighbors, to the relative isolation of the country, that friendship with himself has had to sustain him through many long, solitary hours.
“Life in rural New Hampshire was as lonely as I predicted,” Jack wrote in one essay (I quote with his permission). “The driveway was dirt and undribble-able and while the lawn was big enough for a complete baseball diamond, there weren’t any players around. Being alone with my thoughts was uncomfortable; I’d never had to be alone in my life. But in the midst of my sadness, I began to grow up. I became more creative with the ways that I entertained myself. I spent time drawing, reading, inventing card games and playing the guitar, as well as just sitting and thinking.
In my pensive misery as a twelve-year-old it dawned on me that I would never become the self- sufficient, creative person I wanted to be if I couldn’t even enjoy my own company. I would continue to distract myself with all of the problems around me and never face my own. Although I’m a social person by nature and love spending time with good friends, I owe the security I have in myself to learning how to become my own best friend, in the quiet countryside of New Hampshire.”
Jack and I talked about all this as I drove him back to school last week, where he’s taking a demanding senior-year course load and has decided to try out for the varsity basketball team – despite the fact that he’s spent the last two winter seasons playing squash. He’s been playing basketball for hours a day all fall, just for the fun of it. So, he started working out, lifting weights, running, practicing his jump shot, as a challenge to himself; whether or not he actually makes the team is less important to him than the pleasure he’s found in the discipline of trying.
As Jack would be the first to admit, just a couple of years ago, in the midst of his video-game obsession, he wouldn’t have taken on the challenge of making the team, nor would he have risked the disappointment of rejection. Now, having come to understand himself more fully, he’s realized that it’s by actively engaging in the physical world that he connects with his happiest, best self. Fortunately, when he decided he’d had his fill of video games, he had a “self” to return to, a work-in-progress self to be sure, but one that had been shaped by an early childhood without much access to TV or movies or computers.
Having spent his formative years with no choice but to learn to live in his own body and be entertained by his own imagination, he had plenty of “real world” experiences and skills to build on, some familiarity with the pleasure of making things, getting lost in a book, or climbing a mountain. Thinking about this, putting it into words on a form on his computer, he couldn’t help but wonder what life, and adolescence, might be like for a boy of his temperament coming of age in this next generation.
Having watched Jack’s journey these last eighteen years, I wonder, too. If you grow up with a gadget in the palm of your hand, do you ever develop an inner life? If large portions of your first years on earth are spent online, will you ever make contact with that sacred entity within that guides you toward your full potential as a human being? If you’re an expert at surfing the web by age three, will you ever discover the pleasure of crocheting a hat, building a snow fort, or laying on the grass and staring up at the sky? If there is no silence in your mind, no quiet place in your heart, no true solitude in your soul, do you ever hear the voice within?
We don’t have the answers to these questions; they will be revealed by the next generation of children, the ones who are happily tapping away at iPhones in their car seats. But I think it’s interesting that my eighteen-year-old son, who is a self-taught whiz on the computer, is worried about those kids. And I’m glad to hear him say that he’s grateful now for the low-tech early childhood he had – even the loneliness, even the boredom, even the hard parts.
Jack has one more essay to write, and he’s chosen the topic: mastery for the sake of mastery. In it he wants to write about the pleasure he’s found over the years in teaching himself all kinds of random, mostly useless but deeply satisfying skills: how to do the Rubik’s cube, skip stones across a pond, flip an omelet, climb rocks, hit a wicket shot in tennis, recite Hamlet’s soliloquy, juggle five balls at a time, play “Purple Haze” on the guitar.
Like I said, I’m not a very objective judge, but I think he’s ready for college.
Further reading: a related and fascinating article on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, about the growth of low-tech Waldorf schools in the high-tech epicenter, Silicon Valley. Also, a recent piece in, of all places, Fast Company, about the disappearance of down-time.
I so enjoy reading about your sons. You have such a wonderful way of looking at them.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece, Katrina. These are issues I think about often, especially since my two year old, when handed a framed picture of him and his grandmother, swiped his finger across the glass, trying to advance to the next image.
The term “digital divide” is used to connote the disparity between those with access to technology and those without, but I think it might also apply to the gulf between parents and kids – especially if we don’t take time to consider the way that technology, for all of its benefits, is nevertheless encroaching on our lives. Thanks for reminding me of the need to keep this conversation dynamic in my house.
This is an important issue–one that I think is being glossed over by parents who have come to expect the personal downtime these devices afford. While waiting for my daughter’s ballet class to end on Thursday, we sat next to a 3-year-old and an 18-month-old. The latter had been given an iPad; the former, an iPhone. When they grew fussy, the mom switched the devices, barely looking at her children as she continued her conversations with other waiting moms. It was a profoundly disturbing scene. Two other children played with LeapPad-type videogames. Perhaps by chance–perhaps not–by the moms’ conversation I could tell that every one of these children was in speech therapy.
I’m not sure what we as mothers can do except ensure our family life matches our own values regarding technology. We are an extremely low-tech household–my children prefer reading and the outdoors–and I intend to keep it that way as long as possible. Easy now for me to say, as my oldest is nine, but all I can do is take this path one step at a time.
Oh Katrina,
As the Christmas season approaches, I may just copy this post send it to everyone trying to shop for my little man. Please, nothing that makes a noise, tries to teach my 2 year old to read, or involves swiping of any kind. Ben’s first word was “book” and we visit the library every single week. It’s one of our favorite places. Whatever happened to that being enough for a mother and her two year old? When I re-read Mitten Strings, I analyze the TV chapter. Now, there are so many other things to combat in our choices as parents… the ever present cell phone, TV, electronic toys and gadgets that all claim my child will learn better from them than from my husband and I have to remind myself to use my laptop when Ben naps because when Ben is awake, I want to be the one teaching him and not using technology as a distraction or a parenting mechanism. Please keep sharing your wisdom. We need it even more these days…
Hi Katrina, its always so good to read your posts… My son is just on the verge of finishing school, We too live in the country away from the hustle & bustle with no TV & gadgets… I am so glad that my son has learnt to do so many other things…Explore , Read watch the sunset., play guitar & reflect….Thank you for putting in words what I feel..
Thank you so much for writing this lovely, thoughtful, and thought-provoking essay, Katrina!
It resonated deeply with me, because we don’t have iPhones or even TV in our home. As I write at this computer my son and husband are outside playing kickball. After I send this, I’ll join them.
I’m one of the few moms I know who lets her 6 year-old child roam the neighborhood alone, because I cherish those memories from my own youth (even though my mom now stoutly denies she ever let me out of her sight before I was 16).
That said, I hope I wouldn’t have a problem if my child expressed an interest in doing anything — even play hours of computer games alone.
I hope I wouldn’t judge the activity or him negatively. Passions are so unique, I would never want to imply that my preferences for him were more worthy than his own.
If I missed contact with him because he was involved in some solitary pursuit, which I’m sure I would, I’d try learn more about his passion, with the hope of sharing it with him. Or I would ask him to join me in some activity we found mutually enjoyable.
Your essay raises excellent questions. I hope everyone will read it, think deeply about them, and answer them for themselves.
Thanks so much for writing!
Such a beautiful piece, Katrina. Thank you so much for your thoughtful approach to, well, everything. And what a writer Jack is. I am posting it on Facebook now.
I think about this so often as the mom of four boys. What will the effects be? Sure hope I am doing enough to thwart any ill effects of this digital age.
I’m so glad you wrote this, because this very question is heavy on my heart these days. I feel I am the only person in my children’s lives pulling them away from screens! Our neighborhood is filled with children, yet it’s mostly quiet after school. They’re all inside playing video games and watching TV. What I wonder is this: who will they grow up to be if they continue to grow up so differently than I did? This is my challenge.
Oh, my, this entire blog post could have sprung from the inside of my head! I too, am sitting across the kitchen table from a boy writing college applications. I too am so grateful for the intimate-but-not-too-intimate back-and-forth afforded to us by technology, and I also am so thankful he was able to have his most formative years away from those very devices we are now using. I do not envy the young moms of today — it’s the biggest battle yet to keep your child in the real world when the digital world gets more exciting and more ubiquitous every day.
P.S. Jack’s essay sounds terrific, and I’m sure it’ll get him wherever he wants to go.
Katrina, I am so blown away by Jack’s essay. At 18 he has more wisdom than most adults. What a gift he is to this world!! His essay topic, “Mastery for the sake of mastery” is the most beautiful thing! I often forget this simple essence of zen: Being excellence.
As you know, my oldest has similar traits as a young boy that Jack did at his age (from what I have gathered from your books). If Oliver can grow up to be half as wise as your son, I will be proud beyond measure.
I was actually going to forward you the Waldorf article too. Good stuff! Huge thanks to you and your beautiful son for this post!
This is just so beautiful. I was glued to my iphone as I read it, wishing I was reading it on paper… but thankful for the technology for getting it to me in a such record time 🙂
It made me nostalgic for long summer days in the back yard, with only our imaginations to entertain us.
Please thank Jack for letting you share his words, they left me speechless. He’s a beautiful writer.
Sending love.
Elizabeth
I really love this piece. My oldest child (10y) has Aspergers and he adores the computer and technology. I’m constantly working to help him work towards a balance, which he resists full force at times. It’s interesting because I really tried to limit technology, even battery operated toys!, in his early years. Yet, he’s gravitated towards it anyway. Jack’s journey, while different, gives me hope that my son will find his balance, someday (hopefully soon?). ~ d
Hi Katrina, Sitting at my kitchen island as words and ideas about college essays are flying around me. Jack sounds like a wonderful kid, I find my kid to be wonderful as well—and the more kids I get to know the more wonderful kids I encounter. Now that Steve Jobs has left the building of our planet, I’m hoping that eventually our whiz-kids will sooner than later realize that the ultimate device has long been at hand: the mind. From the finger to the iPad, so long as we learn to connect instead of compete I think humanity has a loving chance.
All Good Wishes to All our collective children that they will have ample and rich opportunity to learn and grow throughout their lives.
That boy, Jack.
And as for all those other dense and difficult questions, on the other side there is that boy, Jack. The case can rest.
It’s a tough issue. I have always battled electronics – earlier it was tv, movies….etc. Now it has turned into computers, itouches…..etc. It is a hard battle and sometimes I wonder why I am fighting it. This is their lives, they will always have this technology now. My oldest daughter has dyslexia, and I finally gave up and let my Dad buy her an ipad. It has apps that have helped with her math and we are just getting into the voice recognition for writing and reading with books while they are read. She has always been verbally advanced, but now with more input, she is expressing so many more ideas and I am blown away.
So, how to take advantage of its strengths while still building a strong inner core is the challenge……..
I really enjoyed reading your article. But I am coming from the other side of the fence. My boys (4 and 1.5 years) have both grown up with technology. As have my husband and I.
We always had a computer and computer games while I was growing up. We also had gameboys (the original) and the NES(original nintendo). We upgraded as often as we could afford to as a family. My husband’s childhood was the same. We have both grown up to become intelligent, fully functioning adults. I love to read, and have adopted the e-reader apps on my phone as an amazing way to be able to read anytime and anywhere. My husband has an excellent job working with the computers that run hospitals and medical imaging instruments (xray machines, etc).
Our boys have grown up with technology, but they very much love books. My 4 year old goes to the library twice, sometimes 3 times a week and is always very excited to read his new book. We read to him daily, and he enjoys helping us read. My 1.5 year old is more than capable of telling the difference between a book and my iPhone, which he also plays with. He absolutely loves reading, and will bring books to me often during the day to be read to him. He also chooses the stories from our book collection that we read every night at bedtime.
I personally, resent being looked upon as a poor mother for encouraging my kids to be proficient with technology. I feel that I am preparing them for a life of unimaginable technological advances. I don’t want to limit their learning of these technologies now, when it will become second nature, just because people can be afraid of change. These have become important life skills, and will continue to be important, regardless of how many people want to protect their kids from any type of technology.
I think your example of emailing drafts of essays back and forth is a more accurate picture of a future with technology than some of the more fearful points. Honestly, technology is making communication and socialization easier. I think the benefits are constantly increasing and far far out weigh the few problems that arise from it. We as parents, just need to change how we parent and make sure that they also have outside play time, and quiet time. But there’s no need to outlaw technology.
I so appreciate your thoughtful response — and in fact, I agree with you: there’s no need to outlaw technology. Nor would I ever suggest that anyone is a poor mother for encouraging kids to be proficient with technology. Quite the opposite; technology is woven into the very fabric our lives. I propose balance and awareness, and that we all keep asking questions, thinking about what it means to live well, and talking to one another — both face to face and in forums like this one. (Technology makes THIS conversation possible, and I am extremely grateful for that!)
I agree, I think that technology just forces us to change our style of parenting to suit the world we live in. I wasn’t necessarily saying that you felt that technology should be banned from kids, just that it seems like (from the comments here and elsewhere) that’s becoming a common stance from mothers. Your article was very well written in my opinion, I shared the link with a mom’s forum that I’m on 🙂
Judging from the comments here, your piece has obviously struck a nerve, as it did with me. As you stated above, I don’t think technology in and of itself is bad; it’s our misuse of it that worries me, and I see it being woefully misused every day. That Fisher Price iPhone holder, which I recently saw advertised, scares the living daylights out of me. Sometimes I worry what my 14 month-old daughter is learning as she watches me sit in front of my computer like a drone. I’ve actually had her come up to me, crane her neck directly between me and the screen, and say, “Hi!” I think, as a culture, we’re heading down a slippery slope. ALL of us, kids and adults alike, could benefit from more idle time. I just read this wonderful story on NPR’s site from the author of “The Phantom Tollbooth,” one of my favorite childhood books. The inspiration for this marvelous book, and his main character, Milo, was essentially born out of the idle time he spent as a kid; I know my best ideas as a writer usually happen when I’m running or in the shower, when my mind can just drift.
My daughter is proving to be much as you describe Jack: not a conventionally “easy” child. My greatest hope is that I can adequately engage her, help her to be comfortable with the uncomfortable parts of life, and not be constantly searching for the escape hatch.
I just bought the fisher price iphone case, and I love it. It allows my youngest to play with it safely. I’m not sure why it would scare anyone? I don’t let him play with it 24/7, but for the little bit that he does play with it each day, I’m protecting a few hundred dollars that it would cost me to replace my phone should it be dropped and broken.
So grateful for this essay today.
Balance…that’s the challenge. I’d love to know more about how you survived Jack’s videogame period. I’ve read both your books, but still can’t imagine the strength and wisdom it would take to let him find his way out on his own.
My oldest is 9, and we limit his game time…but I wonder if we aren’t making it bigger, the “forbidden fruit” by not giving him more say…always second guessing our choices.
The very short answer is: it was not easy, we did the best we could, and we chose to intervene, create limits, new solutions — which didn’t make our son happy at the time, but which he now sees as an important and necessary decision we made out of concern and love. His video game use was having serious negative consequences in all other areas of his life and ours; that was the indication of trouble.
Katrina, Thank you for this wonderful reminder to “stay the course” as my own boy enters adolescence. Jack sounds like such a wonderful, young man!
Jack sounds pretty remarkable. If you get his permission, I’d love to hear some of his thoughts on “mastery for the art of mastery.” I’ve always wished I were more of a dilettante–I tend to be so single-minded that I miss out on simple pleasures. There is, indeed, value in “futzing about” to see what you get–I imagine that’s how a lot of our greatest inventions came about, don’t you? What if Newton had never futzed?
As for technology, I agree with a lot that’s been said already. Technology itself isn’t bad, but I do worry that we use it to distract ourselves from any quiet moment we find in our lives. I watch my stepson sometimes, and if he’s not texting or surfing or connected, he seems at a bit of a loss. Then again, this is the kid who, at age 10, cried one summer because he broke his “Nintendo finger.” No lie. *cringe*
Katrina, your love and passion as a mother is so pure! I too have believed that technology has “over-stimulated” our children from birth! Let our babies discover their hands…. let them feel the security of silence…. let boredom bring them a desire to explore and imagine! Thank you for sharing such pure, genuine emotions! And yes, your son will be rewarded for his efforts to be “the essay!”
Wow- what an amazing young man your son is. Such self-aware writing from an 18-yr-old.
This says so much that needs to be said. I’ll be sharing it with some young mothers I know.