Honest to goodness, PUT DOWN YOUR BLOODY PHONES!!!

I read an amazing post by Hands Free Mama this morning.

Rachel, the blogger, had received a heart-breaking email from a childcare worker talking about how much parents use their Smart Phones and the impact it has on their kids.

Frankly it was a pretty devastating story and made me SO glad that my Samsung Galaxy is complete crap and I have never been able to get it to access:
- the internet
- Facebook
- my emails
(and no, I wouldn't recommend the phone!)

Among other things the post really raised the question 'why can't everyone put their phones down for a while and focus on their kids?'

I am far from perfect at this parenting caper and am definitely guilty of sneaking off to my computer while my kids are playing (or eating dinner!). But I'm not guilty of over-enthusiastic Smart Phone offences and thank goodness because otherwise the comments from some of the kids in Rachel's post would probably have made me cry.

Parenting can be amazingly boring, frustrating and lonely, everyone who does it is incredible and some days having contact with a person who can wipe their own bottom is the only thing that keeps you sane. I'm sure it was always thus and that the parent's who have gone before us just had to go a bit further to get that contact, like down to the village well.

And I don't dispute that Smart Phones are an amazing invention - who would have thought that you could access every single piece of information in the world from something you carry in your pocket) but I honestly wish they didn't exist because you can use them EVERYWHERE and it is very hard to resist just 'a quick check'.

No one would ever set up a computer next to their bed so they can check their emails one last time, or update their Facebook status before they go to sleep, but they have no hesitation logging in with their phone and don't even see it as being rude to their partner.

And when did it become more important to post about your amazing dinner with friends, instead of enjoying your amazing dinner with friends?

Do we really need to share everything, all the time?

Are we just showing off? Or maybe we are all so insecure that we actually do enjoy our dinner more if all our friends (and people we used to work with 10 years ago) complement us on our menu choices. Surely not?

It truly drives me crazy when the people I am with can't leave their phone alone but I hadn't really thought how much more devastating it would be if I were a child and the person obsessed with their phone was my parent until this morning.

And it seems that it is pretty devastating indeed!

Are you a Smart Phone addict?

Don't call me, I'll text you! or why Lynne Truss and phone calls have no place in Mummy communication

My sister often calls me at 5.30pm.

It is a great time in her house, her husband is bathing their daughter and she has 20 minutes to herself.

It is a TERRIBLE time in my house; both kids are being fed, they're tired and in a bad mood (and frankly, so am I).

Although I love chatting to my sister, if she calls at 5.30pm she gets about 1% of my brain space, and a fairly terse 1% at that.

And therein lies the reason I don't really like talking on the phone since I had kids ... you can't see what is happening in the other person's house and if they have small kids the chances that you fluke calling in the 5 minutes of the day that they have to themselves is fairly small.

And to be honest I spend all day talking (mostly about diggers and dinosaurs) and, although I'd love to chat, my need to lie on the couch reading a trashy romance novel is greater.

Which is why I'm so grateful I live in the era of text messages and emails.

These are genius forms of communication for mothers - they can be sent at any time, you can read them at any time, and then you can respond when you have time. Perfect!  
  

Yesterday I received an excellent example of a Mummy to Mummy email - probably typed at 2.30am, or perhaps while my friend was feeding her toddler with one hand and typing with the other.
 
It read like this:

"you went public.
good on you lady
haven't a chance to look at the mo' but i will
so so so great eeing you
come over this tue if you're free...
i owe you tupperward
xx"

I'll translate - she had seen my blog but hadn't read it. We had coffee last week and it was lovely. An invitation for this week. She has a plastic container of mine from when I took her over a casserole recently. And she loves me.

Given the typo in tupperware, I'd say time was up and she needed to get the last line typed before rushing back to her child.

See, everything I needed to know in a form that fits perfectly into our lives.

Recently I sent a text message to a friend that read like this:
"Park thurs usual time/place?"

I sent it at 11.35pm and she replied at 5.40am. Perfect.

Now, although I am far from flawless, I lament the dumbing down of the English language as much as the next person (I would still argue that it is inexcusable in newspapers, books or on official websites).

I laughed in a horrified way as I read my way through Lynne Truss' books and mentally garotted anyone who could be so slack ... but that was before children.  

Capitals, proper sentences and punctuation are for people with more spare time then stay-at-home Mums with crazy toddlers.

And so are phone conversations!

How do you communicate now you have kids? And do you think that near enough is good enough when it comes to grammar and spelling in texts and casual emails?