Parents Finding Common Ground with Teenage Girls
Parents and Teenage Daughters Might Bond Over Technology
Even in middle school, girls still play with Barbies, although their parents may not realize it. The days of admiring the doll for cunning wardrobe accessories have diminished or passed, but new play has emerged. Tween girls design outfits, write scripts, and make sets so that during the next sleepover, they can record films with the video option on their digital cameras, edit the movie with the software that came with the computer, and upload movies to their Myspace pages via Youtube.
Childhood Toys are Technology Assets
Unless they used an actual video camera and recorded over a family vacation, parents generally don't see the products of their young filmmakers. The films usually involve a shaking camera, propped up dolls, and muffled laughter, and the best audience is the film-makers themselves. What is significant in this is that tween girls still cherish their tokens of childhood, and they adapt them to their blossoming abstract thinking and deepening social connections.
Not only do teenagers use toys to create new art, but they use them in pictures to indicate how much they have grown. They show pictures of themselves on slides and in swimming pools; they post pictures and drawings of much-loved stuffed animals. Toys are symbolic of the childhood passions that still shape teenage identities.
Parents and Daughters in Transition
To young teenagers, parents tend to fall into that same category: tokens of childhood. Because parents have money and keys, they have a magical aura of useful possibilities. However, just as girls modify their approach to play, girls also modify their approach to parents, and they want parents to adapt to their new levels of play, understanding and new friendship bonds. Just as Barbie went from sitting in the Barbie pool to sitting in the homemade studio, parents are expected to automatically transform from protector to powerful accessory.
Teenagers Seek Refuge in Technology
Very few parents are willing to accept this demotion without a fight, and so fights happen: fights over the lengths of skirts and fingernails, fights over cell phones, mp3 players, and computer usage, and fights over responsibilities, routines, and respect. During the quiet time of licking wounds, parents call friends or read articles. Girls post the saga on Myspace, receive text messages offering support and sympathy, and write dramatically in journals, emails, and instant messages. They often take upload pictures of themselves looking pouty and announce their current groundings or other punishments, and if they are not personally able to get online, a few text messages to a friend will get the message out.
Parents Find Solutions in Technology
The solution is not to get a Myspace or learn to text message. The solution is not to accept the role dictated by a teenager. The solution is curiosity.
10 years ago, when the drama queen was still in her toddler-princess stage, she haunted every conversation asking “why?” and “how?”. Now it is time for parents to use that same annoying, yet informative tactic. When you see your daughter on the computer, ask her what she is doing. Ask her to show you how she uploads pictures, how she makes Mypace layouts, how she edits movies. Even parents who know the technology well can muster up a bit of wonderment about glitter text. This is a new world, and a new side of your daughter.
There are still plenty of moments when parenting is needed – such as discussing Internet safety, privacy, copyrights, and appropriate language and topics. Some rules transcend environment. However, when parents allow themselves to see the new identities emerging from their children, they are often pleasantly surprised, just as teenagers find their parents are not-so-very-backward when they show an appreciation for a child's book review posted on Amazon.com.
Technology is just one bridge that children cross as they move from children who need parents to install programs, to tweens who are downloading open-source audio mixers. This is a bridge where parents and children can cross together, because there is always something new on the horizon that can be explored together.
Childhood Toys Are Used in Online Movies
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