My gifted kids love to explore. This tendency has resulted in many hours of glorious time on beaches, in woods, on lakeshores, and in our backyard, even. Given open-ended time in a remotely stimulating environment, we’ve never heard the words, “I’m bored,” come out of their mouths.
This same insatiable curiosity has led them all to love reading. From novels to nonfiction, from joke books to Far Side anthologies, from magazines to manuals, exploring the written word provides them with a source of pleasure. I love this kind of exploration for them as much as the outdoor kind.
Alas. There’s another avenue for exploration that is both a blessing and a curse: yes, the internet.
Like it or not, kids will at some point in time start exploring on the internet. If my friend’s mother, who simply wanted an easy dessert recipe, ends up shocked after attempting a Google search for “one pot brownies,” imagine what your children might end up discovering, even if their intentions are innocent.
And the amount of time spent online seems to grow as kids get older. My fifteen-year-old had some friends over last weekend; I checked on them and was dismayed at first to see them all on their smartphones, taking pictures of each other and watching things online. I realized, though, that this sharing of funny Youtube videos, Vines, and memes is more or less a stand-in for other shared experiences I enjoyed with friends in my youth: listening to records, watching Grease 2 for the millionth time, and watching music videos on MTV. Instead of making prank phone calls or calling boys on whom we had crushes, teens today comment on Instagram photos and communicate back and forth with friends on Snapchat. As a parent, though, it can feel scary and overwhelming at times. Can we do anything to at least reduce the phone addiction?
Just like we offer pearls of wisdom to make exploring on the beach safer (“Don’t dig with your back to the ocean! Sneaker waves!”), certainly we can provide guidance to make the time our children spend exploring on the web as safe as possible.
On March 10th in Boulder and on April 21st in Littleton, Mackintosh Academy will welcome educator Brian Weaver to present Will You Please Put Your Phone Down? Self-discipline, Safety, and Adolescent Exploration in 2016 as a part of Mack’s Parent Education series.
“Gifted teenagers’ curiosity and quest for autonomy have become increasingly complex forces in today’s era. This can sometimes be more simply translated to technology addiction and imbalance! How can we encourage positive, practical self-discipline for gifted adolescents toward balance? Drawing from a body of work from our most respected and cutting-edge authors and leaders in this field, attendees of this presentation will walk away with neuroscientific, immediate, applicable and transferable strategies to serve gifted tweens, teens and families with a metacognitive schema that capitalizes on what they do best – exploring freely. Revisiting adolescent willpower through Habits of Mind will shine a light of profound implications for lifelong safety and success.”
Mack-Boulder: Thursday, March 10th from 6:30-8pm
Mack-Littleton: Thursday, April 21st from 6:30-8pm
RSVP:
boulder-office@mackintoshacademy.com (Boulder)
beth@mackintoshacademy.com (Littleton)