I was reading a book with my younger son recently, who is just starting chapter books. He was reading out loud to me, in his monotone, sounding-it-out way. One of the characters said something sarcastic and he didn’t get it, so he reread it, then said, “Mom, this doesn’t make sense!” Once I added the sarcastic tone to the sentence, he got it right away. Which got me thinking about communication.
I have been participating in various committees and parent groups to facilitate the start up of a new alternative school. In today’s world of email, most of the communication takes place over email. You wouldn’t believe how much the volume has increased in my personal account as a result! We had a meeting the other night, and people’s feelings came up resulting from, mainly, the emails going around.
It made me think of my son, and how he didn’t get the sarcasm in the book. I think the danger with email is the amount of room left for interpretation. Without the visual and body language clues, it’s hard to understand what someone might mean. Even taking that sentence from the book I was reading with my son, said in various different ways, it could entirely change the tone.
And then of course, there are the people who just don’t reply to the emails. Who knows, maybe they don’t read their emails frequently. Maybe they are just too busy. I don’t think Miss Manners would approve though! For the person on the receiving end, it doesn’t paint a very receptive picture. Especially when you are sending an email to the principal, who in my personal opinion should always reply to their parent body, even if only to say, “I’m too busy!”
The reality of course is, that although meeting in person is ideal, it is difficult to get together easily in today’s busy world. Email becomes the easy option. And so communication seems to get broken down along the way.
I worry about my kids, and entering this world of cyber-communication. How do we protect them not only from the very real dangers out there on the net, but also their feelings? I can’t say I have ever been a fan of the phone, but cyberspace takes the ‘three-way-call’ to a new level. Daughters of our good friends are on ‘Facebook’. So am I, and I see the possible dangers. I know one of those girls was communicating feelings to the mass group that I wouldn’t necessarily be wanting my child to express so openly. Even though the “legal” age is 13, I know for a fact that there are lots of people on there who are not 13. Bullying used to be more about face-to-face confrontation, but now a much larger opportunity exists. It also seems that a lot more bullies exist.
I think a big part of the problem is that when you aren’t face to face, it’s harder to see someone as a person. I know how I felt, eventually meeting some of the people from the school that I had not met before beginning email communication. It really changed my perspective, HEARING them speak, SEEING their body language. And when the first person spoke up at the last meeting, saying “Hey, you know what, I am feeling a bit bombarded by things that are being said” I think changed a lot of people’s view on some of the things they might have been saying that weren’t meant to be negative, but were taken as such. I felt a softening around the table. It is a lot easier to understand and be understood when we are face to face with our fellow humans. Heck, it’s a lot easier to truly understand any animal when you can see and hear it!
In today’s world where so much takes place over the internet, not only do we need to refocus our kids for the sake of exercise, but also for humanity. And compassion. Relationships need human contact. I hope that communication is an art that isn’t lost in generations to come. I feel lucky to have the internet to be able to easily be in contact with my faraway friends and family. It is great to be able to share stories, pictures, jokes, etc. easily. But nothing compares to when I actually get to see and spend time with friends and family. I hope my children and their children will feel the same.
I think children will learn the nuances of email (really Facebook, SMS and IM–kids don’t really use email) the same way they learn the nuances of any other medium: they will learn it from adults. This means, of course, that adults need to be on Facebook and whatever other new media, just as they are “on” the telephone, books and whatever other old media. It’s the only way to model good behaviour and provide real security. My own children, now 17 and 21, have had Facebook accounts for years; but the original condition was that they make both my wife and me friends. We did this not to pry (how much privacy a child ought to have is something for another discussion), but to be present and actively involved in their online lives, just as we are in their offline lives. I see this as a fundamental responsibility. Children will come across inappropriate behaviour and content online, just as they will offline; that cannot be helped. And when they do, we adults don’t want to protect them from their feelings–that would make them dependent and helpless. We want to show them how to deal with those feelings in an appropriate way so that when the day comes when we’re not around, they’ll know what to do. We need to be online to do that.
(Kristine, because you can’t hear or see me, I’ve used the little smiley/emoticon to show you that I’ve said my piece with a light spirit.)