Riding to Our Next Milestone

Another big milestone in our lives - TJ is learning to ride his bike!

TJ has been reluctant to try his bike without training wheels for over a year.  I can see it on his face every time he tries and loses his balance.  It's the look of absolute panic of not being in control.  Like his sister, he seems to struggle with balance on the bike.  It took Samantha years to learn to ride a bike and to this day I think she'd rather walk. 

I spent a lot of my pre-teen years on a bike.  I had a metallic brown bike with a banana seat and chopper style handle bars.  My parents got me a white oval plate with a black 7 on it.  Before the first BMX bikes ever hit the street this bike was the coolest thing around.

Jumps, stunts, skids, speed; I lived on that bike as did my friends. We stayed out all day and only came home for dinner when someone's mom would call for dinner.  Literally.  A mom would open the door to that kid's house and yell, "DINNER!" And in anticipation of the next question would also yell, "Now!"

Honestly, TJ is an inside kid.  Anything that has to do with being outside only last for a few minutes before he's tired, or thirsty, or wants to ask mom a question - just to get inside again.  I really hope this is a phase he grows out of soon.  And with the coming of the spring and more kids on the street to play with since last fall I am hoping the phase ends this year.  The only traffic on my street is people who live on it and if he is outside playing until we call him for dinner that would be okay with me.  Less time on the computer and on line and more time outside.

And now he is riding his bike.  It's coming to him much more quickly than in the past.  Yes, he cried when I told him we were taking off the training wheels but he was really proud of himself for not falling and riding as far as he did without me holding on to him!  And praise works.  I tell TJ over and over again how awesome he is for riding his bike.

We need to work on braking and steering.  Those are concepts that he still needs to work on.  So is taking his feet off the pedals when he stops so he can keep up right.  The poor guy forgets that without his training wheels he will fall over unless he puts his feet on the ground.

He's doing better every time he gets on it.  And there's the lesson:

You're going to fall over from time to time.  In fact, sometimes you're going to crash.  However, it's how you pick yourself up and try again that will ultimately measure success.  In life you only get training wheels for so long.

Go TJ.  Go!

Reducing My Social Media Footprint

Facebook.

Twitter.

Instagram.

TripAdvisor.

Yelp.

YouTube.

Blogger.

Our lives are on display on the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Life on line. Vacations, birth announcements, milestones, family gatherings, good moods, foul moods, break-ups, dinner, hangovers, the list is literally only limited to the activities you can do in one day and post on line. Social Media sites have more members than most countries in the world and the six degrees of separation between people becomes really blurred on a global scale.

As my confidence in using these instant gratification apps decreases, my apprehension in what is on line increases.  Its not so much what is on line; its what's on line and who can see it.  Companies market to me based on the web sites I visit and phishers, scammers, and hackers look to take my information for purposes both criminal and commercial.  

Raising children in this environment is challenging because the technology is so new, and changes/up grades happen so quickly, that people of my generation can barely keep up in order to provide proper parental guidance.  Furthermore, responsible parenting demands that you constantly check up on your kids on line.  Never think for a second that because you tell your kids not to do something on line that they won't just make up some crazy avatar name with you none the wiser.  Our kids live more on line than they do in the present, here and now, and because they don't know where the limits are (because we don't know ourselves) there is a real danger to their safety.  Am I sounding overly cautious?  Am I sounding like an "old fart"?  Maybe.  But I also know I am on to something.

Last Christmas my daughter posted a picture on Twitter that did not belong in the public domain.  While it was adolescent and dumb and ultimately benign, the real message was that photos and other status updates last on line forever .

For-Ev-Er.

I have resolved to reduce my social media footprint.  The other day I checked Facebook and discovered that I had 256 Friends.  Most were people who I connected with in the Facebook boom.  People from high school who I have not seen since graduation from Monroe-Woodbury in 1985.   Some are acquaintances from college.  A lot are former students that I taught.  Most all of them I rarely keep in touch with other than the occasional update comment. 

"Unfriend-ing" people is horrible term for Facebook to use.  Its somewhat cold and very impersonal.  Nonetheless, I have reduced the number to 187 and I am still working at it.  I don't think most people will even realize that we are no longer "Friends".  Some have deleted their own Facebook pages and I never even knew it.  The decision making process for eliminating people from the list is somewhat simple enough; do I have face to face contact with you in 2013, are you family, are you a mentor/mentee, are you otherwise important in my life?  If any of those answers were, Yes, then they stayed on list.

There is more to go, I use other sites for home movies, records of my travel, records of my running. I plan to turn down the amount of those postings, or at least keep mindful of what I am putting out there.

The irony is not lost on me that this blog is another example of my life on line.  The blog is deliberately for friends and family.  I am sure if you are reading this that you are one of those two and not a stranger just passing by.  Its a hard choice to sanitize family events and post them on line or let them remain unfiltered for the world to peruse. 

What a conundrum.  

At least I don't belong to MySpace...

An Open Letter to My Daughter

Samantha,

With full knowledge that I don't know if or when you will read this letter - I send it to you with a heart full of love, sadness, and hope.

I don't remember much about being fifteen years old.  As a sophomore in John S. Burke Catholic High School my days were taken with school work, a season of track, and the high school theater company.  I remember putting on "The Night of January 16th" by Ayn Rand - my debut - and running the mile at a track meet in 5:15 (and still finishing last).  Aside from those few fun memories I was clueless to the world around me.  I didn't know where I fit in, I had no vision of the man I would become, and my world was very limited to the next few days.

Being fifteen today seems so different.  Instant access to the world, social media, and vast knowledge at your fingertips has led - in my opinion - to an overall degradation of morality, judgement, and acceptable behaviors.  The social media scene has not only revealed behaviors that used to be far removed from public knowledge to an exponential growth in those same behaviors for the world to see.  While stunts like the "Milk Gallon Challenge" and the "Cinnamon Challenge" are juvenile acts; fight clubs, sexual encounters, bullying, and causal drug use have become social media subcultures that are gaining popularity. 

As a parent it creates a great level of anxiety.

I realize that I am becoming more and more like my own father, recalcitrant to learning how to make the current technology work for me.  I think I will be miserable in my old age trying to get my imbedded iPhone to synch with my iPaceMaker.   

I miss my little girl.


Too much of your life is online.  And that should scare you.