Picket Fence Post

Anyone who loves politics and journalism is in mourning today after hearing about the loss of Tim Russert, the moderator of the gold standard in political talk shows, Meet the Press.

I used Russert not only as a shining example to my journalism students of how to conduct well researched and balanced interviews (many students will attest that I was fond of having them watch Russert excerpts and told them, at length, about his use of white boards during the 2000 presidential election), but also used his show as a way to introduce my children to politics and how exciting it can be. I wrote about the loss on my other blog, Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum.

Sunday morning talk shows — and political journalism — will never be the same.

UPDATE: I wrote in greater length about what we’ve lost with the passing of Tim Russert in this column.

Image credit: NBC News/Getty Images.

This weekend’s Boston Globe Magazine contained a feature story asking this one central question:

Should you spy on your kids’ online and cell phone/texting activities? If so, how much?

I will be the first to admit that texting is a mystery to me. I’m sure I could figure it out if I needed to, but, at this point in time, I have neither the reason nor desire to possess such knowledge. I don’t IM but have done so when I worked for another web site. I’m planning to hold out — as long as humanly and socially possible — on buying my kids cell phones.

Currently, when my offspring (ages 9, 9 and 6) use the Internet, they do so on a laptop computer in the kitchen where everyone can see what they’re doing. Right now, as far as safety and the Internet are concerned, The Spouse and I are teaching them how to use it wisely, giving them such wise chestnuts of advice such as not to provide personal information to anyone online, instructing them how to safely search for information and how to find the right web site to, say, look up info about the Wright brothers.

But when they get older, when they start harassing me for a cell phone, when they develop the desire to communicate via texting, I’m going to face the dilemma of how much latitude I should provide them online and on their cell phones, and how much control/oversight I should utilize.

The gist of the Globe piece is that neither extreme, no oversight or too much, is advisable, however finding that sweet spot in between the two, the spot that provides some degree of freedom with some degree of oversight, seems tricky.

All I know is that the later I can put off buying a cell phone for my kids, the better. As long as I know where they are, who they’re with and how they’re getting home (and most of the time it’s Driver Mom who’s bringing them places) I see no need for each to have his or her own phone. To further build my anti-cell phone case, I just learned that a study has shown that teens who use cell phones a great deal (which would be, if you go by the Globe piece, all of them) have trouble sleeping and literally “put their health at risk,” according to the Washington Post . The article continued:

“‘The message is that adolescents who use their cell phones excessively are much more stressed, much more restless, much more fatigued, and have a greater tendency to develop sleep deprivation as a result of their calling habits,’ said study author Dr. Gaby Bader, an associate professor in the department of clinical neuroscience at Sahlgren’s Academy in Goteburg.”

With teens thinking that they need to be in contact with friends 24/7 as if they’re on-call ER docs making life-and-death decisions, a researcher said that the nearly “ubiquitous” cell phones have put “considerable pressure to keep in touch . . . and that this pressure can develop into an addiction with serious negative ramifications for adolescent health.”

But what do I know? I came of age in the era of the rotary dial telephone.

There had been some technical difficulties here at the Picket Fence Post, with folks complaining that — in between running errands to the card store, the florist and the local spa fetching gifts for their mothers, wives, etc. — they haven’t been able to answer my oh-so-scintillating questions at the end of my blog posts.

I have been told by people with authority (i.e. — not me) that the problem should now be resolved.

That’s the phrase that was shrieked at me the other day by the Youngest Boy who believed that I had wantonly deprived him of his right to do whatever his first-grade heart desired.

The Spouse said that the pediatric utterance is proof-positive that I’ve officially become Ralphie’s father. Certainly you know Ralphie . . . the kid from the classic film A Christmas Story  whose father transformed the muttering of obscenities into a work of art. In one of the movie’s pivotal moments, Ralphie reflexively says the “f” word — what A Christmas Story called “the queen mother of dirty words.” And Ralphie says it in front of his dad. Irony of all ironies, it never occurs to Ralphie’s parents that their son could’ve possibly learned the “f” word from his foul-mouthed father, and press him to identify the culprit who extinguished Ralphie’s innocence by invoking the dreaded expletive in front of the boy. (Ralphie scape-goats his friend.)

Not that I’m running around my house randomly hurling the “f” word, mind you. While I’ll cop to saying the “s” word when, for example, a pile of glass dessert plates accidentally comes raining down on my head from an upper cabinet shelf as I’m fetching cereal bowls for kids’ breakfasts, I’ve tried my best to refrain from invoking the mother of all bad words in front of the little people. (No promises about what words I might hurl at The Spouse in the heat of anger behind closed doors though, in the middle of a “grown-up” fight.)

Since becoming a mom, I’ve worked hard at replacing colorful words in my vocabulary with tamer ones. I’ve been rather successful at invoking the word “freakin’” instead of its sinister cousin. Apparently too successful, as it’s now being used by my Youngest Boy. Against me.

I suppose being a freakin’ mommy’s not so bad. It could be worse.

Well, if you ask columnist Paul Campos, the answer to that question would be a definitive, big fat, “Yes!”

In a recent piece, Campos highlighted the controversy sparked by a New York Sun columnist who admitted that she let her 9-year-old son take the subway by himself. (Her first mistake: Telling people about it. Many modern parents, or at least some of the ones I’ve encountered online, seem ill-equipped to deal with any description of parenting that falls in any way short of perfection.)

While describing the negative feedback the columnist received — attacks calling her a horrible and abusive mother, reckless and stupid . . . one woman asked if the columnist had checked her son’s intended route on the subway and street to see if any registered sex offenders lived along the way – Campos wrote, “All this reflects a more general problem: the many cultural and political forces pushing us to behave like a nation of hysterics.”

After her column ran, Lenore Skenazy, was interviewed on national television under the headline which asked whether she was the “World’s Worst Mom.” Using crime stats to back up her argument that it’s safe to let her son take the subway, Skenazy wrote: “Somehow, a whole lot of parents have become convinced that nothing outside the home is safe. At the same time, many also have become convinced that their children are helpless to fend for themselves. They write their kids off as ‘dreamers,’ when they’ve never given them a real chance to wake up and develop some self-sufficiency.”

Campos totally agreed, saying in his MetroWest Daily News column, “At the beginning of the 21st century, the typical American suburb is just about the safest place that has ever existed in the history of the world — yet it’s full of terrified people.”

Perhaps if we parents let loose our safety death grip that we have on our kids for a moment or two, let them play outside without us hovering around as long as we’ve issued firm instructions that there is to be no wilding or Girls Gone Wild antics or Wild Kingdom action involving killing or biting things, maybe it’ll be good for everyone, including our kids.

So what say you folks . . . do you think today’s parents are too overprotective of our kids?