Lately I've been interested in single use devices that do what they're meant to do without adding in distractions and extras. This is something I've previously pursued in my digital tools but haven't always been as intentional with physical devices.

This pursuit has primarily been inspired by parenting kids who are at the age where they both want (and in some cases need) technology. The almost daily request of can I have a phone and everyone else in my class has one has put me in a position of needing to come up with a good answer for why I don't plan on giving them one anytime soon—if ever. It's also left me wondering if maybe giving them my old phone (stripped of most of its functions) was a step in the wrong direction.

Let me try and unpack my thinking:

I had repurposed my old iPhone in order to give my kids a way to a) listen to music/podcasts and b) take pictures. For the last couple years this has worked just fine. But over the last few months I began to notice a couple things that had me second guessing this.

1) They were scrolling. Despite having no access to anything to really scroll through, they were still just lying there, looking at the phone and flipping through pictures they had taken. They weren't doing anything creative with those images, just looking at them. And they had the same slumped over posture and vacant expression that we all do when sucked into a mindless feed.

2) They had been conditioned to streaming. Here's a question: do we think it's a good idea to give kids access to anything they want whenever they want it? I feel like if we were to apply that generally to most things the answer would be no. Yet, when it comes to entertainment this is now the new normal. And I guess from a childhood-development perspective I'm wondering what that will do to how they interact with the world. Also, what is this doing to their relationship with the things they enjoy? More on this in a future post I think.

Anyways, in response to this I've started a difficult backtracking in our home, putting some new boundaries on things as well as taking away what had previously been given. I took back the old phone and have sort of-mostly-not quite-but almost cut them off from Apple Music. Not an easy thing, but as Katherine Martinko says, "you can say no."

However, I also believe in saying yes at the same time. So I did some research and bought both kids a DAP (digital audio player). Like the iPods or mp3 players we used to have, it's designed to do one thing and one thing only: play music. They weren't initially happy with this switch. It's less convenient (we have to put music on it). It's not as intuitive (physical buttons rather than a touchscreen). And it doesn't do anything else. But, I notice it's now the first thing they grab when we're going somewhere in the car.

Small win? Sure, why not.

In The Disappearance of Childhood, Postman discusses the emergence of childhood as a legally protected class in England in the late 18th C and into the 19th. He notes that up until 1780, children could still be prosecuted for over 200 crimes where the punishment was a public hanging, including stealing a coat and participating in a riot. Laws were soon passed that prohibited such extreme offences against children as well as protecting them from crimes committed against them. For example, in 1814 a law was passed that made it a criminal offence to steal a child. For the first time.

The idea here is that up until this point, there was no government protection on kids. They were left to the responsibility of whatever adult they were in the care of. As capitalism and industrialization emerged, kids being raised in lower classes were basically just cheap labour. However, as the government began to step in, the rights of children began to matter. Postman writes,

"In the 18th C, the idea that the state had the right to act as a protector of children was both novel and radical. Nonetheless, gradually the total authority of parents was humanely modified so that all social classes were forced into partnership with government in taking responsibility for child nurturing."

Here's what I find interesting. Today there is a growing sentiment, particularly among more conservative families, that the government should be hands off when it comes to the raising of kids. And this is why a broader view of history matters. When kids were left to the sole protection of parents and caregivers, they were frequently exploited, abused, and generally seen as property for them to do with as they pleased.

It's just important to remember that the things we often think of as constant, the rights of children for example, are not as immutable as might think.

Reading Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood and part of his argument is how the invention of the printing press created a new form of adulthood, one that had to be earned through learning and engagement with printed words. He quotes Lewis Mumford in talking about how print shifted people's focus away from what was right in front of them,

"More than any other device, the printed book released people from the domination of the immediate and the local… print made a greater impression than actual events… To exist was to exist in print: the rest of the world tended gradually to become more shadowy.

I find it interesting how when you compare this with today, obviously the digital world now dominates our focus. The immediate is what is happening online. It's become a new social existence that has pulled people's attention away from both deeper learning through written material and local things. We have become less engaged with what's going on right around us and the needs of our own community.

I assume the overall point of this book is going to be about establishing how the distinction between childhood and adulthood that was created with the advent of the printed word has disappeared as a result of new media (TV in this case). It's worth noting that childhood, in this understanding, would have been hyper-local. Kids were somewhat forced to be in place and interact with what was immediately happening around them. Now, the digital world has coopted that and we are seeing the negative effects playing out all over the world.

My kids and I have a variation of the same conversation about once a week.

“Dad, how come you never drive us to school?” / “All our friends get driven.” / “Why do you always make us walk?” / “But it’s a blizzard/pouring rain/tornado/-35° out there!”

My answer is always the same:

“Walking is good for the planet and good for you.”

I know. I’m that parent.

But something interesting happened when my oldest kid started the conversation again last week; my youngest answered for me. She’s been learning about ways to care for the earth in her class and they were taking a tally on how many kids drive, roll, or walk to school. She was able to make a connection between a value we’re trying to live by and what her class was teaching.

She was also super excited to walk home in the pouring rain that week. It’s a small win but I’ll take it.

The whole thing got me thinking about what “sticks” when it comes to parenting and how we talk about things that really matter with our kids. It really is less about those one-off conversations that can feel really big and important; and instead is more about the regular and consistent conversations that add up over time. It’s also what we communicate through our actions and habits. What sticks is the aggregate.

The end of the world is a popular narrative archetype. Many movies, shows, books, and video games have capitalized on this. There’s a particular sub-genre though that seems to have a particular resonance; surviving an apocalyptic wasteland with a child in your care (see, The Last of Us). It’s easy to see why it connects with people; there’s an added layer of tension that comes with bringing a kid into a survival scenario. You care about their safety, but also their future. It’s not enough for them to make it through just one moment of danger, it’s about who they need to become to make it through them all. It’s about them picking up the skills and instincts necessary for them to survive. It’s about what sticks.

Parenting in the apocalypse is a rough gig.

This isn’t a thought piece on climate despair. As Rebecca Solnit says, “the emergency is not over. The outcome is not decided. We are deciding it now.” (Not Too Late) I am not saying that we need to teach our kids how to survive a nightmarish wasteland. Probably I'm not...

The thing about putting a parenting dynamic into the centre of these stories of societal collapse is that even though it increases tension in the present, it also raises the possibility of building a better world in the future. It’s not enough to teach kids how to survive if you can’t also teach them how to love and be loved. As the brilliant novel (and show) Station Eleven put it, “Survival is insufficient.”

Parenting kids in the age of the climate crisis is about holding all these tensions together. We need to help our kids adopt more sustainable ways of living than we likely had growing up. We also need to protect them in the present and make sure that they feel safe. And we need to teach them how to love and be loved, to notice and care for all living things, to see beyond their self-interest and to help us build a better world. I hope it all sticks.

Walking with my kids has become one of the main ways I get to try and build that aggregate. We get 20 min together before and after school to talk about our days, notice things in our neighbourhood that we wouldn’t see if we drove by them, learn how to prepare for the weather, and stop and play at the park on the way home.

Amazingly, at the park they no longer care how extreme the weather is. I sometimes do though… 🥶

† Note, this is a piece I wrote for an environmental activism newsletter a couple years ago.

"[North] American parents can become immune to just how rarely their children really play."

Reading a reflection this morning on how rarely parents let their kids just play, uninterrupted by adults and without screens, toys, or really even direction. The idea here is that real play is just pure imagination and environment. It's part of a growing conversation around the need for kids to engage in more 'risky play' time. It also could be seen as a direct reaction to the era of helicopter parenting we have been experiencing over the last decade or so.

One thing I really enjoyed about this particular reflection is the way it connected outdoor play with cultivating a love and concern for the natural world in kids. It notes how modern society tends to throw a book at every problem (something I'm definitely guilty of); but there is no replacement for simply being outside. The author writes, "[if you] want a world very different from the one we currently know? Let kids build the capacity to imagine it."