Comments on: Feel Their Pain

By: Stuart Clark

Stuart Clark — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:44:49 +0000

I went without a cell phone for 6 months last year. I just told people to email me. It was bliss. Now I have a phone again. It just annoys me every time it rings.

By: B. Durbin

B. Durbin — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:28:43 +0000

A side note on penmanship— I work for a photography studio that has high schools as its primary clients, and I URGE any of you with children above, say, ten, to check to see if their handwriting is legible. We have the students fill out basic information such as names so we know who we’ve photographed, and some of them are so scrawled we literally have no idea who they are. Then they can’t get their photos.

Mind you, I’m not exaggerating when I say that some of them write little more than a bumpy line. If I had time, I could scan some hair-raising examples. Some are merely confusing (“is that an a, an o, a d or a c-l?”), and quite a few are perfectly legible, if not beautiful.

But give your child a test to see if they could write a note in an emergency situation that can be understood, and if they can’t, you might present a few hypotheticals where good writing might be really helpful, if not life-saving. As I’ve heard people say in response to penmanship: “We can’t all be doctors.”

By: Terry Weyna

Terry Weyna — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:31:42 +0000

Aoede, I hope you get past that feeling soon, because truly, there are so many riches in so many different areas of literature. Try going outside your comfort zone and reading things that *don’t* initially appeal to you — you might be surprised. If you read hard sf, try fantasy, and vice versa; if you read epic sf, try slipstream. If you read all this stuff, then try mainstream. If you read only contemporary fiction, try the classics. If you read only fiction, try nonfiction. Truly, you can’t ever really run out of wonderful stuff to read. If you need some specific suggestions, honestly, email me off list and ask for some, and I’ll be happy to come up with a few for you (tmweyna@gmail.com).

I do get your point about not needing to unplug, which is what you were aiming at — but it’s so painful for me to read of someone who can’t find a good book. It makes me cringe; for me that would be hell on earth. So I’m happy to try to help if I can.

By: Aoede

Aoede — Sun, 10 May 2009 03:21:25 +0000

Terry,

It’s probably more of a “can’t find anything that appeals to me” than a “there literally is nothing more to read”. (And here I use the old-fashioned dictionary definition of “literally”, lest this hyperbolic world mislead you.)

I feel that whenever print media reports on stuff like this, it frequently exaggerates things to make kids look like tech addicts. I mean, I spend a huge amount of time on the computer, but I also spend considerable time reading and having face-to-face conversations and looking at random things outside. You don’t need to “unplug for a week” to do any of those things.

By: Terry Weyna

Terry Weyna — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:57:24 +0000

Kay @23, I’m still giggling at your notion that you’re running out of things to read. I’m 52, and I know quite well that I’ll never live long enough even to read all the books I *own*, much less all the books I want to read. There are riches galore out there. If you need suggestions, just reply to me on this thread, and I’ll be happy to send you links to a couple of lists that are readily available on the net, and should keep you going for quite some time. Here’s just one example:

http://vanderworld.blogspot.com/2006/05/big-ass-fantasy-list.html

By: Foots

Foots — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:50:43 +0000

OK, guys, am I going to have to bring Scalzi in here to slap you all silly? Didn’t I gently suggest that we all be supportive as fellow parents and yet we’re still all getting defensive and touchy?

Perhaps we can all agree on one thing (she says, wearily, knowing that it’ll never work): that our children’s natures will form our families way more than our family ‘types’ will ever form our children. Or, you know – whatever. Just chill, dudes. Buy a slurpy. Get an ice-cream cone with your kids (Jeez I just opened up the ‘I never let MY kids eat ice-cream – don’t you know what’s in it?!’ discussion). Sermon over, thank you – normal service resuming shortly.

By: Paul Turnbull

Paul Turnbull — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:53:21 +0000

Why am I still browsing the Internet?

By: Pam Adams

Pam Adams — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:07:51 +0000

I would find it much harder to not read for a week.

By: Erika

Erika — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:39:31 +0000

Steve @56, that’s not to say I don’t read articles about the potential for another Carrington Event and gleefully think, “Burn, baby, burn!” But it’s more a fantasy about early retirement than a comment on my personal relationship to technology.

By: mythago

mythago — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:05:20 +0000

but I honestly believe you should raise your children to fit your family

Sure. Anybody who says “OMFG you mean your kid isn’t Tweeting yet and he’s THREE?!?!?!” needs a boot to the head. But people get defensive about it because, well, there are a lot of parents who do the parenting equivalent of only listening to obscure bands nobody’s ever heard of, and then abandoning any band that achieves popular success. There’s a very luddite wing of the Xtreme Parenting squad.