By Evelyn Yap
Copy Editor
eveyap@sph.com.sg

 

CREDIT should always be given where it is due, and for next week’s Tip of the Week in Digital Life, I have The Children to thank.
 
I had asked The Daughter for a shortcut which she uses "for computing or surfing or managing your music files – anything cool." She suggested this: Click the scrollwheel on a link and it immediately takes you to the article in a new tab.
                                                                                              
I tested it, clicking on several links – from those for articles to login boxes – and it worked. When I thanked her for it, she said, "Kor-kor taught me." (Kor Kor is Hokkien for "older brother".)
 
When I thanked The Son for it, asking him how he knew the trick, he merely shrugged and said, "I just discovered it on my own."
 
Welcome to the iPod generation. Where picking up surfing shortcuts is as natural as breathing.
 
For someone who grew up recording music on flimsy tapes, compared today when children record audio on swish music players, the middle-clicking tip is also a metaphor for not ruling teenagers with an iron fist.
 
But later on the metaphor; first, the iron fist bit.
 
Much as I loathe admitting it, I guess I was rather strict with my now teenagers when they were little.
 
Thanks – or no thanks – to the parenting stories I had to do in my days as a reporter in Life!, I decided that firm was what I would be. From constantly hearing from the counsellors and psychologists I interviewed that parents must have a grip on their kids before they get into their "terrible twos", I was determined that my children would not become brats – you know the sort who kicks and screams at the mall until he gets his go at the video arcade machine.
 
The Father and I used to have a little chart titled, Time For Crime, stuck on the refrigerator. I thought the rhyme was neat. Can’t remember the exact details, but essentially, it was a little table listing things like "lies equals no computer games for the day" and "slow eating equals 10 minutes off video games time".
 
Hey, they did take an hour for meals, you know. But you are probably going, "Boy, I’m glad I’m not your child."
 
Well, The Son, 17, had a thought in similar vein a few months ago. When ticked off for something (the specifics are private), his retort was: "I used to obey all that you both said, but now I shall decide on what to listen to."
 
I was flabbergasted. For the first time in my life, this Mother could not think of a retort.
 
Which may be a good thing because the personal pondering made me realise that things like the Time For Crime table must have been suffocating. Sorry, teens.
 
That said, I think some of that strictness matters: I thank God that The Children, though independent thinkers now – and that’s the way it should be – still have their heads firmly screwed on their shoulders. (I am sure Sunday School played a great part too.)
 
But back to the middle-clicking metaphor bit. What the tip brought home again to me was that the middle path lets me into a new tab in my children’s lives. Ruling with an iron fist will only shut me out.
 
For example, rather than ban them from drinking, they were allowed wine from three or four years ago, beginning with occasions like birthdays (though my father frowns on me for this). The reasoning is that they would not go overboard on their own.
 
And I ask The Son to, please, tell me before he has a tipple with friends – and "only on occasion, okay?" (The Daughter, at 16, is under-aged, so she cannot buy her own.)
 
Also, rather than ban them from having Facebook, e-mail and instant chat on, and the music player in their ears while they are doing homework, I keep asking, "You sure you can study with all this going on?"
 
The Son, with typical word economy, says, "Yah, yah."
 
The Daughter chirps, "Of course."
 
"How come, tell me."
 
"Because I’m cool."
 
Here's to living with the iPod generation.