Chapter 21
The Wonders of E-Mail . . . Families Keeping in Touch
It's estimated that over 44 billion e-mail messages will be sent from home computers this year, for an average of 52 per week, per household. It's fast becoming an inexpensive and convenient alternative to using the telephone, and a faster alternative to snail mail.
When I asked other parents to tell me why they use e-mail to communicate with their children and other family members, they shared these ten reasons. We've shared their stories with you below, too, just in case you need further incentives to get online.
I've shared some of the benefits to using e-mail, below.
The Hidden Benefits of E-mail
• It's the only way you can make sure your kids are listening to what you have to say, instead of their interrupting or contradicting you, mid-thought.
• You're always in the mood to "talk" when you send an e-mail (unlike getting a phone call).
• Time differences, mail delays and telephone charges make international communication, other than e-mail, difficult.
• It's convenient—no stamps, no envelopes and no addresses other than a simple e-mail address (which you can store in your computer's address book).
• Kids use it as a diary, and can share all their daily activities with their parents.
• It makes it easier for parents to help with homework and school assignments.
• It's so easy for you to share all the little things you want to, not just the general things that letters usually contain.
• You can send photos, audio messages and can forward documents and other things you've found online.
• You can share one message with many people at the same time, just by adding them to the mailing list.
• It's a great way to move one word-processed document from location to location. If your child left her report at home, you can e-mail it to her at school.
Parents Talking to Children . . . Love Notes to Your Kids
I'm an original sentimentalist. (I even cry at a good AT&T commercial, and anything having to do with grandparents will do me in.) Given the number of hours I work, and the stress of my everyday practice, my time with my children has always been limited. In trying to find ways to communicate with them, I've tried to come up with ways to tell my children that I love them and am thinking about them, even when I'm not home.
I used to write notes on their blackboard each night so they would find them first thing in the morning. I also used to leave short handwritten notes in their lunch boxes. They would respond with their blackboard messages back to me, and by leaving notes on my pillow.
But as my practice took me out of town more often, I found it harder to leave them little indications of my affection. I wasn't home to write my messages, or receive theirs. Somehow phone calls were strained if I made them during the hours they were home and still awake, and by the time I was ready to enjoy a conversation with them, they were already asleep. Trips to other time zones made it even harder to coordinate our schedules.
In addition, as my children got older, these tried and true measures lost their effectiveness. My children no longer took their lunches to school, and outgrew the blackboards. Their calls to me usually coincided with my busiest time of day, and my calls to them ended up with my leaving messages on their answering machines. Their busy schedules and mine made communication harder.
Technology helped solve both problems, and my children and I learned to share love notes and information via e-mail. In e-mail, schedules and time zones are irrelevant. You send it when you can, and the recipients reply when they can. You can also "talk" when you're in the mood. The Internet is always open, around the world. It's also much more affordable than transnational and international phone calls.
E-mail lets me review my children's homework and school assignments too, even while traveling. I can review their reports and term papers for school, making suggestions for improvements and calling certain resources to their attention. It may be a poor substitute for family dinners and working side-by-side in the familyroom, but given the demands on parents with their careers and community activities, and those on children with their own activities and responsibilities, it works.
And it works both ways. As my children found information they wanted to share with me, they began to attach articles and other information to their e-mail messages. My son, in particular, has used e-mail to forward jokes to me and to his friends at the same time, by using an e-mail broadcast list. When my daughter needs advice on how to respond to an e-mail she has received from a friend who in turn needs advice, she shares the e-mail with me for my suggestions. The former panic usually associated with my leaving for Moscow is gone. I'm never further than my e-mail, and we each check it several times a day.
Even when I'm home we coordinate schedules and handle the normal family administration via e-mail more often than not these days, especially when we need to involve my son, now at college. And, every now and again, we send each other love notes, reminding ourselves of days of the blackboard messages and lunch box notes. In my lunch box note tradition, a great site for kids and families is the Postcard site maintained at MIT (http://postcards.www.media.mit.edu/postcards). You can select from many postcards and send them to friends and family for free.
E-mail is particularly helpful when children need to work together in teams. They can share reports and ideas via e-mail, and can set agendas and share information, making working together far more efficient. Interesting resources and electronic documentation can be sent with the click of a mouse across town or around the world.
This is particularly helpful when the only other option is to drive the children across town in the pouring rain. Even the most technology resistant among us will recognize the advantages of having the library open 24 hours a day from your own home computer, especially during that rainstorm.
It also helps them stay in touch. Al McWhirr is a technology educator in New Jersey. He uses e-mail to stay in touch with his students. It's inspiring.
How One Teacher Uses E-mail to Stay in Touch
by Al McWhirr, a high school teacher
My kids brought me into the computer age. I fought it for the longest time, only using the computer and accessories when absolutely necessary. Now that I use it, I don't know how I got along without it. Without my e-mail capabilities, I would be lost. I use it just about every day, and I enjoy it. As a teacher, I am able to keep in touch with many of my former students who moved on to college. Prior to this, it would be a hand written letter sent on occasion. I seem to have a better relationship with these students because they feel that I am taking an interest in their life beyond high school, which, in fact, is the case. I feel that I am on the same "electronic" level as they are.
Occasionally, students of mine will e-mail me for clarification on assignments. This is great, since I don't have to give out my phone number. ( I have yet to receive a harassing e-mail note). From college, my daughter was able to e-mail her high school calculus teacher. It was the night before an exam, and her professor was not available to help her with her question. Her high school teacher solved the problem.
More Than E-mail . . . Keeping An Eye On Your Family
While on a recent trip to Moscow, I was watching CNN International. They ran a piece on "I See You," new technology developed by IBM that permits photos, updated every 30 seconds, to be posted on a secure website. The technology was being tested at a daycare center in Connecticut. (There are other similar projects and products being used around the country, too. You can check out a website for KinderCam at www.kindercam.com.) The parents can check in on their kids from work, merely by accessing the website and using their special security passwords. (Making sure that these are really secure pictures is important to the children's security.)
Just think about how terrific this is. Parents can see what their kids are doing throughout the day, and their kids know they can show things throughout the day to their parents. Even more exciting is the fact that other family members, like grandparents who live in other countries or other states, can watch the children at play.
You're never out of touch. It's a terrific way of sharing memories. Now I can cry at "I See You" sites as well as AT&T commercials.
E-Mail Can Be Used to Accomplish Many Things
Outdoor Online teaches children how to get the most out of e-mail communication. I asked Mindi Roberts to share some stories about how campers, and their families, have used e-mail.
Mindi Roberts Shares Some E-mail War Stories from Outdoor Online
A camp mom with "computer phobia" learned e-mail from her husband before her son went to camp. Everyday, it was the highlight of her day to receive her child's e-mail and she got over the "computer phobia" fast. It helped her deal with separation anxiety and gave them a great way to stay in touch.
An 11 year old female camper taught her elderly next door neighbor about e-mail and computer skills to help her find companionship online.
At camp, campers are told that e-mail is monitored by the system administrator. Once, a couple of campers who decided to date during camp e-mailed each other a place to meet secretly. They arrived to find some counselors waiting, and the word got around camp.
On a good note, the camp has a dance at the end of each session. Campers e-mail their song requests for the last dance, perhaps with a wave file, to lobby for the last dance.
Here's an example how one family used the Internet to deal with a family dispute, from Melissa, a member of our research team who shall remain nameless to protect her identity and her life.
My Family Saga, by Melissa
In my family, e-mail has played a large part in resolving family conflicts. E-mail has been used to resolve arguments between family members when the parties did not want to actually speak to each other. At the beginning of the summer, my sister-in-law (the co-gossiper), fed up with her brother (not my perfect husband, the other brother) over an issue involving their mother . . . and a chair . . . and who paid for it . . . and if it was even paid for . . . and why wasn't it paid for . . . and when would it be paid for . . . and it was wrong that it hadn't been paid for . . . and who was the one who ever said it had been paid for in the first place . . . (you get the point), finally decided to air her opinion to her brother, but was uncomfortable speaking about it in person or even over the phone. She felt that she was not "good on her feet," and would not be able to clearly make her points. She decided to e-mail what was bothering her to her brother. She had time to carefully craft her letter and was able to organize her thoughts.
Well, her e-mail brought about an e-mail response from her brother, who explained his position. The content of his response angered her even more. So she proceeded to write an e-mail to end all e-mails. This e-mail basically mentioned every single thing that he had done wrong in the past four years—no stone was left unturned. Needless to say, he was none too happy, and e-mailed back a "sweet" little note of his own. At that point, for about the next month, communication of any kind between them ceased.
Then my brother-in-law, perhaps realizing that this last e-mail from his sister contained a good deal of truth, e-mailed back a friendly letter to his sister, basically saying that by-gones should be by-gones. My sister-in-law, who was never one to deal well with tension, gladly agreed, and then actually picked up the phone to call him. Everything was back to normal (actually no one in my husband's family is normal) thanks to the ability to communicate via e-mail. The back and forth communications were helpful in resolving problems and resentments that otherwise probably never would have been spoken about.
And, by the way, my mother-in-law paid for the chair herself.