Texting As A Tool

My wife and I had a great advantage when we were courting. For most of it – we were apart. Of course, we didn’t see it as an advantage at the time, in fact, it was a huge, stressful, pain in the neck. This was pre-email and cheap phone calls, and so we were good at writing. We wrote every day. We could communicate love in letters more easily than we could when we came together again after our long separations. In fact, my wife still says to me, “John, I will always cherish that false impression I had of you.”

Sometimes it works that way with our kids too. Years ago, friends said that they were having difficulty with their prickly teenage daughter. One morning they saw scrawled on her chalkboard, “I hate you, Mum!” The mum wrote a reply, “Sorry you feel like that because I love you.” For a long time, their verbal conversations remained locked up and frosty, but they kept up a discussion on the chalkboard.

I never remember being particularly impressed by Ronald Reagan  when he was President but I was surprised to see a letter he wrote to one of his children printed in Time Magazine. It was thoughtful and very loving even though he was having  to address some painful issue (I think it was his son being caught smoking dope).

Today, texting can be a wonderful way to communicate with kids. In the last week two colleagues have told me how they have been blown away by the loving texts they received from their kids – far more affectionate than they could ever bring themselves to express at close range. Especially during the teenage years, kids get tongue tied and flustered when talking face to face. With a bit of distance to reduce the emotional ‘noise’, and with time to compose thoughts carefully, texts can be beautiful.  Despite the tendency texts have of getting misinterpreted, they could be an ideal way to reopen a stalled relationship, to give a gentle reminder about something, or just as nice way to let your kids know that you are thinking about them. 

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