Earlier today I heard one student complain to another, “That’s not fair! Why do your parents let you know your AppleID and mine don’t?” This is perhaps not what Yiddish enthusiasts term “Die alte kashe,” the age-old question (which by the way is “Tra-la, tra-di-ri-di-rom?”), but is a question more attuned to modern-day angst. And yet I think there’s actually a lot in this overheard conversational snippet. The question asked by this child is at its core about trust, independence, modern technology and perhaps most importantly development.
Just last night (of course well after I had hoped to already be asleep), I was sitting up with my elder son Benjy as we planned his travel arrangements for USY International Convention at the end of the month, which is in Dallas. He’s to fly there on his own (no help given with the arrangements by USY), figure out how to get himself to the convention center, deal with his rooming (and presumably roommates), be a model citizen that his school, chapter and family would be proud of, and then get himself back to Boston. At 16 (which he now is) I actually started college, so I suppose my own parents had no lesser concerns with me than I have for him. But seriously, wasn’t he just in diapers, having to stay put wherever I left him?! I’m not gonna start singing Sunrise Sunset, but I have to admit that I do increasingly gets its saccharin pathos.
So how do we know as parents when it is time to let our kids know their AppleID (or Google Play as the case may be)? Despite my vocational backgrounds as a pediatric neuropsychologist and cantor-rabbi, I probably don’t have any better answer than any other parent. Since this is my blog, however, I’ll tell you what I think. To my mind, it’s all about reading your child, truly understanding what s/he understands, and then filling in the gaps in ways that nurture skill development, while still maintaining an increasingly permeable safety net.
This thought reminds me of the very first of the bakashot (requests) that comprise the Amidah, our most important daily prayer. The first thing we ask for after establishing our’s and God’s place in the world is knowledge – not health, not happiness, not justice, not money: Atah chonen l’adam da’at; You God graciously endow human beings with knowledge. But it is not simply “knowledge” (and by that I mean facts and information) that we want for ourselves or our kids. No, what we ask for specifically is chonenu me’it’cha deah, binah v’haskel; graciously grant us information, understanding and proficiency. Learning can never be just about knowledge; it always has to be about process. Though we want our kids to be smart, what we really need for them to be are independent knowledge seekers with the appropriate acquisition tools. And if I were to think about the ultimate goal really, it is bringing all of these knowledge components together to attain levav chochmah, a heart of wisdom.
I wonder if there’s an app for all that?