I have a new and longreaching goal when it comes to technology in our family life: nonjudgment. Here’s why.

Several weeks ago, a friend and I attended a seminar on parenting and technology. The leaders opened up the evening by asking audience members to pose their questions up front, so the questions could be answered during the presentation. I was totally blown away by the intensity of the questions. In fact, three-fourths of the parents who raised their hands actually had very small questions but very large, impassioned rants that surrounded them. As…

Andy and a circle of his friends suddenly want to do nothing but e-mail each other. It’s like they have a developmental urge to text, but have no cell phones. (They’ve come close to IM-ing, but it seems that whenever one friend figures out how to do it, the other forgets…so, frustrated with each other, they say, “Oh, let’s just email.”) A typical email dialogue goes like this:

Andy: That’s so funny.

Friend: What?

Andy: What you said before.

Friend: Yeah.

Andy: Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Keep in mind that, done with email, this meaningful…

When Andy was three, I was chatting with a more experienced mom about her part-time job. “Do you enjoy it?” I asked. “What I love is that no one touches my desk when I’m gone.” At the time, I was too much of a newbie parent to understand. I said, “Oh!” but I thought, “Huh?” It didn’t take long, though, as my three-year-old got more adventurous, to totally appreciate her point. As a parent, your children gradually permeate every corner of your world until very little is left untouched. It’s nice…

For me, one of the major aggravations of the digital age is that each of us must manage a collection of passwords, just to access what is ours. And now I’m finding even parenting is not immune from password issues.

Andy has a multitude of screen/user names for Web sites and a few different passwords. His password path has paralleled his parents’. He started out with one very easy password to use everywhere, but that has mutated in several directions depending on site requirements (too short, too long, not the right mix of…

Andy bought a PlayStation 2 game system yesterday. I was really happy for him, because this was something he’s wanted for a very long time. And his parents finally caved realized this would be an asset to our household. Of course, some “rules” were part of the bargain, but by far the biggest challenge was trying to figure out how to deal with Alex in the mix. And no amount of talking to Alex about how this is a toy for 11-year-olds, not 5-year-olds, came even close to computing. Having Andrew play…

I recently did something very, very naive, and I’m going to confess it right here.

For Christmas, I gave Joe a Web site–a blog really–on which it was my intention to write daily notes to him about what an awesome guy he is and how much I appreciate him. Then one day, I noticed Andrew at the site, reading through it. There was nothing inappropriate for him to read, but I sort of felt as though our privacy was violated. I recoiled and said to him, “Hey, you shouldn’t be reading that!” He…

Last night, everyone in my house went to bed early–except me. So, with an unexpected hour alone, I sat down at the computer with the intention of hunting online for a freelance writer based in Zurich (for work). Which led me to the magazine of SWISS International Air Lines. Which led me to a blog post about Swiss bloggers. Which led me to a lecture by an American about the slow movement. By this time, I looked up and it was high time for me to go to bed, too. An…