Momservation: What comes first: That you Liked someone’s Instagram photo because they Liked yours, or they Liked your Instagam photo because you Liked theirs?
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Oooooooh, I’m telling!
So I busted my daughter the other night for being on her phone after bedtime. But the interesting thing is this:
I busted your kids too.
In catching my daughter in the act of posting an Instagram photo at 10:30 at night on a school night (I happened to be checking in on her Instagram when a brand new photo popped up), I also caught ONE HUNDRED of her friends who most likely snuck their phones into bed too.
Our kids are “sleeping” with each other through their phones.
When I went in to take my daughter’s phone away (who pretended to be sound asleep despite posting a picture 3.5 seconds earlier), her phone was lighting up like a Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting with kids Liking and commenting on her picture.
I watched as notification after notification rolled in from good kids gone bad.
It was so amazing to me how many kids were still trolling Instagram after they should’ve been long asleep—and wondering if their parents knew (or cared) that their kids were having a late night affair with their phone and thus my child. I couldn’t resist staying up myself, curious to see how far into the night these kids would engage with Instagram.
I only made it to midnight. But I’ll tell you what—many of your kids made it longer.
This is one of the things I hate about social media and why I was so resistant to letting my kids add Twitter to their list of colossal time sucks that take their attention away from the real and more meaningful world.
These young kids don’t have the willpower to affectively monitor themselves—and damnit—I’m too tired at night to try and run interference on a kid who is bent on sneaking their phone into bed for a little make-out session with social media.
But you know what? I care too much about my kid to give up. If she’s not going to see the folly in staying up until all-hours, then being unable to rouse herself from bed in the morning, starting her day off sleep-deprived, then her bedtime gets moved back until she gets it.
If she can’t resist reaching for a phone charging on her nightstand that is lighting up with notifications, then the phone charges in the kitchen.
If she can’t keep time spent on social media in perspective, then social media accounts go away until perspective properly adjusts.
But I need one more thing to happen to help me teach my kid to use her time more wisely.
I need your kid to stop “sleeping” with my kid and put their damn phones away too. If everyone would do this—then there would be no late night texts and notifications, nothing to check out on Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, Kik, AskFm, Vine, YouTube…
Because everyone would be asleep. Like they’re supposed to be.
#Supervision
Singing my song Sister! Like I have told my kids “Nothing that exciting is happening when everyone should be asleep and if it is, you will find out tomorrow morning!” And so continues my love/hate relationship with a teenage daughter and her phone…
Hubby says the same thing Amanda but more along the lines of all activity: “Nothing good happens after midnight”. As in – it’s just going to get you in trouble. I thought I was just going to have to deal w/ the daughter and her phone, but my older son was the one who pushed for Twitter. I want to go back to the days of passsing notes…
Thanks for stopping by Amanda! Enjoy the journey!
A wise mom with kids older than mine told me her rule for all phones being placed on the counter at 9 pm. Its one I have adopted but I have gotten sloppy with it and have a million excuses for my sloppiness, which I won’t bore you with. Unfortunately, my kids try and sneak that one past me and I don’t always catch it. But I am in complete agreement and will make a valiant effort to enforce my own “damn” rule out of respect for all moms doing the hard work every day. Thanks for the good reminder!