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Retro-Tech Parenting

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Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#171

Post by mathgeek »

bigiain wrote: post #166
TimTheTinker wrote: post #18

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids: - lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years - a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.). - Lego Spike and Spike Prime robot…

That sounds super cool. What age range are your kids, and when do you expect them to start pushing back due to peer pressure from friends playing whatever the equivalent of Roblox or Pokemon is when they get there?

One of the secrets to parenting is that kids will rebel no matter what you do. They will push back on something, and giving in means they will push back on something else. Choosing when and what is the complicated part, because it really is simple that you cannot and should not prevent the rebellion.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#172

Post by le-mark »

aidenn0 wrote: post #159

When my oldest two kids were tweens, it seemed like the average age of first-cell-phone was about 10 in their social circles. I didn't want to do that, but not being able to text also amounted to social exclusion, so I got them each a jmp.chat line and they could send and receive texts from the family computer. Haven't had to do it for my youngest kid yet as the age that her friends are getting cell phones is much ol…

Same here. Very few kids in my sons middle school class have gotten phones, most of his friends have not. Makes it a lot easier when they’re not a lone. I also see drastically fewer kids (and adults) on devices in restaurants which is encouraging.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#173

Post by le-mark »

strife25 wrote: post #137

Generally agree with this approach. We need to make sure that friction exists in our kids' lives. I have a toddler, and screen time is something that is on top of my mind, Balancing the trade-offs of when to use it while also minimizing it as much as possible. Something that made me really sick to the stomach was learning how Cocomelon was doing AB testing to make sure that children don't look away from the show[1].…

I feel like the method we used worked really well. We allowed screen time only after meals and they had to eat; I wasn’t a “clean your plate” nazi; but they had to eat something. Then as they got older it turned into; get up and dressed for school and eat; the faster they were ready the more screen time they had before school. Same for after school; homework and dinner. I also use it for discipline; want to call names or be mean? Lose screen time.

Now in middle school it’s summer vacation and they’re home all day. They don’t get screen time until chores are done. They go all day without screens rather than do their chores and I’m ok with that.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#174

Post by throwaway173738 »

> I bought a mini CD boom box for the house. My oldest loves bringing it around to different rooms, plugging it in, and putting in a CD. I bought her the K-Pop Demon Hunters CD for her birthday. The local public library has CDs! CDs are awesome.

Yoto players pretty neatly reproduce the old experience of putting something physical into a player for my toddler. He’ll probably graduate to a CD player when he’s older but right now he can pick from a set of cards and hear music or a story.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#175

Post by AuthAuth »

kraquepype wrote: post #65
Bratmon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think enough parents have internalized that if they're the "I don't let my teenager have a phone" parent in 2026, that also means they're the "I don't let my teenager have friends" parent.

There's a line to toe - each kid is different, but with my daughter she went from a flip phone in middle school, to a smart phone in high school. We didn't turn on mobile data for her smart phone (hand me down pixel) until about a year ago. She is very responsible with it and it hasn't been much of an issue. She had no problems making friends, and if her phone was filtering shallow people out her friend pool a bit th…

I like lineageOS but it feels cruel to give a kid who is dying for a smartphone a nexus5 with lineageOS on it.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#176

Post by hgoel »

Time for more anecdotes from people who think they're geniuses, about how socially isolating your children is actually good for them.

Just going to be more of the same shit many of us dealt with in our childhoods, having productive pursuits mocked because the adults think they're the smartest people in the world.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#177

Post by pm90 »

This was an excellent read. I admire the lengths to which the author has gone to enable this experience and then to document and share it. As a new parent myself, Ive been thinking about this. While I don’t have the same affinity to physical media (IMO its plastic waste), I do want to guard the child from the infinite online slop machine; but I also don’t want them to not use technology that may be useful. My approach is to treat them as a human that can make choices based on tradeoffs… critical to this is perhaps some kind of guided experience with tech so that they are aware of it/dont get bedazzled by something they see their friends/clasmates doing. Im not sure what that will look like but I appreciate other parents are thinking along similar lines.

I do think that what exists now by default is just not acceptable… I and my spouse are privileged to understand how tech works, what it can do to someones mind etc. but the vast majority of people probably don’t… and as such a significant % of children are quite likely having a terrible experience…

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#178

Post by jagged-chisel »

stronglikedan wrote: post #41
scrappyjoe wrote: post #28

I set up a little neighbourhood pbx this year on an oracle cloud always free instance. Took a couple of days. Any family can buy a WiFi-enabled office phone and I’ll set up an extension for them. It’s working great! My six year old had a 15 minute chat with classmate while we were making dinner today; they have arranged a play date for next Monday. A couple of weeks ago a 5 year old invented prank calls. Every now an…

Sadly, all the busybodies in my community would make this unbearable, since they'd have direct lines to people instead of having to wait to see them outside to complain to them.

I mean, you’re not required to answer. Nor to have the ringer on. Nor to have the phone active …

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#179

Post by dredmorbius »

jjulius wrote: post #49
japhyr wrote: post #45

This is great, but it's also easy to go too far in this direction. This can work through elementary school and into middle school, but I don't think it works in high school. It's really hard to be a high school student without your own phone. I know some people who have kept their kids from having phones into high school. It avoids some of the addictive and distracting issues that come from having phones at a young a…

>And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities. How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?

Pre-arranged times. Be there or else.

Payphones.

Time still exists. Payphones not so much.

And: payphones were ubiquitous. Car parks, bus stops, restaurants, bars, other businesses, random street corners, airports, bus depots, train stations. Probably several at a given high school at different locations. So long as you had loose change they were a reliable option. These started to disappear in the late 1990s, though support continued generally through the late aughts, and in certain locales (e.g., NYC) through the late 2010s.

There's some interesting technological anthropology in The Paper Chase, a film set at Harvard Law School in the early 1970s (released 1973), there is a payphone on the dorm floor, and it is the only phone available. That and a number of other elements date the film in ways that other set-dressing (costumes, architecture, cars) don't convey as emphatically.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#180

Post by protocolture »

Interesting timing.

I am looking to set up a raspi with Debian and running Gizmos and Gadgets, and some other old educational games.

Probably going to use my Callisto 2 case in the short term.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4846997

Considering putting a small launcher together with some images of different games in doxbox for him to play. Maybe some old mac ones too.

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