Tonight Little Sweetie was thrilled to learn that she has been accepted into the Vancouver Maker Faire, a DIY festival we attended last year. She loved it, and immediately wanted to run her own booth, based on her Etsy store,  2 Dots 1 Symbol, which sells emoticon jewelry.

Her Etsy store has been a great way to develop a range of skills, and the Maker Faire has the opportunity to put that in overdrive. So tonight I began the process of developing a workbook that will help her get ready for the Maker Faire, and hone her math, research, analytic and creative skills in the process. I think of this as the Pre-School for Creative Startups, for which I owe a debt to Doug Richards.

Here’s what Lesson 1 looked like:

Profits and costs

Profit is the difference between how much it costs to make something, and how much you can sell it for. You have two kinds of costs for this project: fixed and marginal.

Fixed costs

Fixed costs: These are the costs that you will have no matter how much jewelry you sell.

Your fixed costs for the Maker Faire include the costs for your booth:

• $180 for registration
• $25 for one additional table

1. What are your total costs for the booth?

Labour costs: These are the costs of having people help you do your work at the Faire, or preparing for the Faire.

If we need help setting up, tearing down (cleaning and packing up), or looking after the booth, you will have to pay for that help.  The hours of the Maker Faire are:

• 10am to 6pm on June 23 and 24th to run the booth
• 12-8 pm for on June 22 to set up
• 6pm to midnight (12 am) on June 24 to tear down

1. How many hours will you need to run the booth?
2. How many hours will it take to set up the booth?
3. How many hours will it take to tear down the booth?
4. What are the total hours you will need to spend at the Maker Faire?

Labour costs: These are the costs of having someone work for you.

If we need someone to help us keep an eye on you and your friends while you are running the booth, we should pay them $15/hour.

1. If you pay someone to help out during the hours you are working on or at the booth, what will your labour costs be?

***

Little Sweetie dove into these problems with enormous enthusiasm, even though she’s normally the type to avoid doing her math homework. I’m hopeful that the real-world challenge of running her own Maker Faire booth will encourage her to work away at the various challenges I’ve now spelled out for her in a series of worksheets she will complete in the weeks ahead.

This is worksheet one of many. Follow the rest as I post them here in the coming weeks, or come see Little Sweetie’s completed work at the Maker Faire!

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Today’s practice: Focus on healing your kids, not on figuring out how you’ve damaged them.

In the past year a number of very important and dear people in our lives have started or grown their families in a way not everybody knows is possible: by adopting kids who have been living in foster care. In fact, our friends and family now include at least five families with kids who have spent some part of their lives in foster care.

Watching our friends welcome their new kids into their homes and lives, I’m struck by how much of the parenthood journey is absolutely identical to what we experienced when we started our family by hatching our babies from giant eggs, and also, by some significant differences.

One of those differences involves the basic paradigm and level of self-criticism we bring to our role as parents. I constantly worry about how I may be screwing up my kids, how other people may think I’m screwing up my kids, or how I may yet screw them up in the future. My friends who have adopted older kids, on the other hand, focus less on how they are going to screw up their kids and more on how they are going to heal them.

This strikes me as a useful lens that any parent can effectively use. Instead of worrying about how we might be damaging our kids, we can make the painful but safe assumption that they are or will be damaged, or at least hurt in some way — because life is a hard journey, and we can’t bubble wrap our kids. (Thanks to whomever it was that spoke with me recently about the bubble wrap metaphor.)

So start with the assumption that your kids need to be healed. Approach them not with the fantasy of sheltering them, or moulding them, or turning them into specific kinds of people with specific skills. Stop worrying about the specific ways in which you are somehow falling short in that effort. Instead, think of them as people who are living this human journey through suffering and fear, and do what you can to help heal them on their way.

And if you have a few minutes to spare from the job of healing your kids, think about how you can help heal all the other pained people you see around you — on- and offline.

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Today’s practice: Make a family tech schedule.

We recently took the bold, terrifying step of pulling all the gaming consoles (Xbox, Playstation and Wii) out of our home media center, and sending them on a vacation to the closet. We took this measure in response to our kid’s increasing obsession with video gaming, and on a certain level, it has worked: he’s gaming less, and we are having fewer arguments about how often, how much and which games he’s allowed to play.

Fewer, but not none. That is because our unilateral strategy missed the most crucial step: engaging both kids in a conversation about the role video games, iPads and other digital activities should play in our family.

We’re correcting that by making a family tech schedule: a list of days and hours when different amounts and types of tech activities will be available to each of us, so that the kids will know when gaming time is an option, and when it’s off the table. Most importantly, we’re including them in that process, so that we can encourage critical, intentional thinking about technology use.

I’ll let you know how it goes. And do tell me how your family manages tech access in your home!

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I’m one of more than a thousand Internet experts who contributed thoughts about our emergent digital world to the 2012 Elon University-Pew Internet & American Life study on the future of the Internet. My comments were picked up in the Globe and Mail and MindShift, where I got to carry the banner for the pro-digital side of the equation (surprise!), so I wanted to post my full comment about the impact of the Internet on kids, as it appears on the Elon University site. Amazingly, the quote that got picked up is also the same quote I Facebooked after completing the survey in the first place!

The impact of technology on young brains will be a mixed bag: it will enhance some capacities and diminish others, and will probably help certain kinds of people perform better and others will end up performing worse. I checked the positive box because I am concerned that with all our hand-wringing about the way brains are being rewired, we are focusing excessively on the down sides.

Yes, I expect that my now-8-year-old daughter will spend less time reading novels and more time playing video games, and that makes me sad: I have a generational and cultural bias that makes novel-reading seem like a more worthy pastime. The key is to recognize that our cultural and generational biases strongly shape our judgments about the way younger people think and spend their time. If we live in a world that values and rewards now-declining capacities—like the ability to sustain attention on a single subject for a long period or to write in full, grammatically-correct sentences—that world is not going to be around a lot longer, and it seems pretty clear that the new world is necessarily going to be driven by the skills and values of this younger generation.

If we can stop fretting about what we’re losing, we can make room to get excited about what we’re gaining: the ability to multitask, to feel connected to ‘strangers’ as well as neighbours, to create media unselfconsciously, to live in a society of producers rather than consumers. The question we face as individuals, organizations, educators and perhaps especially as parents is how we can help today’s kids to prepare for that world—the world they will actually live in and help to create—instead of the world we are already nostalgic for.

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If you think online calendaring is for scheduling business meetings, appointments and the occasional lunch date, you’re missing out. Online calendars can also be a great way to bring order to the chaos of family life — if you create or subscribe to the essential calendars that will keep your family happy and functional. Here are 5 calendars that can help:

1. School calendar: With any luck, your kids’ school or local school board publishes an online calendar that shows school holidays, professional development days, and other school closures or special events. As long as the calendar outputs an iCal feed, you can subscribe to it — like the one on this calendar from Sherman Elementary in San Francisco. If your school doesn’t share its calendar in subscribe-able form, let them know you’d like to see their calendar as an iCal.
2. Family-friendly events: Ever wake up on Saturday morning and wonder what you’re going to do with the kids today? Set up a calendar to track fun events and performances for kids. Look for a family events calendar in your area and (if it offers an iCal feed) subscribe to it, or check out the family category on Upcoming and subscribe to that for your town.
3. Pick-up schedule: It can be awfully hard to keep track of who is taking which kid to school on which day, picking up who where when, or handling the job of ferrying kids to and from after school activities and playdates. Create a dedicated, shared calendar just for pickups and drop-offs, and mark who is responsible for taking each kid to each location on each day of the week.
4. Homework schedule: If your kids have reached the age where they have specific homework assignments and due dates, create a homework calendar to track when that book report or science project needs to be handed in. Share the online version with all the adults in your home, so they can help the kids keep track, and if your kids use a computer, smartphone or iPod Touch, sync their homework calendar to those devices, too. Just as crucial, print out the homework calendar every few weeks and post it where the kids will see it — and then remind them to get to work!
5. Family wireframe: The toughest part of managing family life can be the job of making time for your kids, your relationship and yourself. Create a separate calendar that you can use to wireframe your ideal family life — to create an outline of the way you’d ideally divide your time between work and home, and the way you’d like to allocate your home time to things like family outings, homework time or other activities. I mostly keep mine hidden, but every few months I switch it on and use it to ground my decisions about how to spend my time and structure my work.

Do you use an online calendar like Google Calendar to keep your home life running smoothly? I’d love to hear your tips.

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[O]n the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, which liberates you to be a bitch. Not a bitch to others — …online mothers’ groups are quick to sanction hostility — but the impatient, imperfect bitch of a mom uses jarred babyfood, disposable diapers and a TV-as sitter. The mom who takes off the halo and admits to impefection.

That comes from the foreword I wrote for Motherhood Online, a terrific volume of essays edited by Michelle Moravec. The chapters cover topics ranging from online communities for mothers trying in vitro fertilization, to the online conversations among moms of autistic kids, to the online support networks for teenage moms who are rewriting the narrative of young motherhood. Reading these essays was fascinating and inspiring, and I was honored that Michelle invited me to contribute a foreword that reflects on some of the essays’ common themes and insights.

You can check out the Table of Contents, read the preface and my foreword to Motherhood Online here – or just go ahead and order a copy on Amazon.com.

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If you have never been more than 39 weeks pregnant, you may be under the impression that the human gestation period lasts 40 weeks. Hah!  40 weeks, it turns out, is kind of a rough overage. Some babies need to cook for a bit longer. Some babies need to cook a bit less.

But when you have been pregnant for 40 weeks plus 1 day, you discover that nobody pays much attention to the idea that your mileage may vary. The phone begins to ring: Have you got a baby yet? Is everything ok? Don’t you need to run out and get a C-section?

At least, that was my experience with Little Sweetie, who finally materialized 17 days after her supposed due date, without any of the telltale signs of a post-term baby. She just needed a little extra time in the oven, and it was only with some fairly intensive medical intervention (Pitocin, anyone?) that she was persuaded to join us out here in the land of the post-natal.

I remember a very tense two weeks before her birth, during which I finally set our outgoing voicemail to say “No baby yet, and we’re not picking up messages, so you’ll hear when you hear.” These days, expectant parents have a  more efficient option: the Facebook or Twitter update that proclaims, with clarity, that baby has not yet arrived.

But why should the expectant parents be tasked with the job of letting us know the latest about their (non)event? As I’ve waited for news from a couple of dear friends who are expecting their first, I have found myself using their Facebook and Twitter feeds as rough indicators of whether baby might be imminent. If there’s been a tweet within the past few hours, I assume they are not yet in labour. Yes, they are geeky enough that they usually update some social network every hour or two. No, they aren’t so geeky that I would expect them to tweet during the labour itself.

For once, despite what Steve Jobs promised, there is no app for that. Oh sure, there are tons of apps for the pregnant or soon-to-be-parents themselves. But what of the rest of us, the eager fans, friends and family?

Sensing a niche to be filled, and recognizing that nothing says I love you (and your future baby) like the gift of wireframes, here is the app I wish I had right now: hatchr.

Admittedly, this part feels a little intrusive, but hey, there is nothing polite about relentlessly scouring your friends’ social media profiles to figure out if they’re in labour — and it’s more or less the same info you get by looking up a user handle on TweetStats.
And because wireframes aren’t much of a gift if they don’t come with a business model:

To my expectant friends: enjoy these days of anticipation! And to the rest of you: every time you feel the urge to check on an expectant friend, try cooking and freezing a meal for them instead. They’ll appreciate it much more, and soon enough.

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Print books may be under siege from the rise of e-books, but they have a tenacious hold on a particular group: children and toddlers. Their parents are insisting this next generation of readers spend their early years with old-fashioned books. This is the case even with parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones. They freely acknowledge their digital double standard, saying they want their children to be surrounded by print books, to experience turning physical pages as they learn about shapes, colors and animals.

So the New York Times reports in an article today on resistance to ebooks for young children. It’s an interesting challenge for ebook developers, particularly since children’s ebooks have been the standard-bearers for the interactive and graphical possibilities of tablet-native titles. In part because storybooks are shorter than adult titles, they’ve demonstrated far more creativity than the initial generation of adult ebooks, featuring everything from simulated pop-ups to reading aloud to touch-triggered animations.

But it’s a great example of how an app’s greatest strength will typically also be its greatest liability. Precisely because children’s ebooks have been so successful in blurring the line between book and app, and between narrative and game, they can lose the perceived purity of the reading experience. Our emphasis on reading as the cornerstone of education and learning means that parents resist anything that appears to distract from or dilute that reading experience — particularly if it feels like that new paradigm of evil, Video Games.

We owe it to our kids to rethink this idea that books and readings are not only distinct from, but antithetical to, gaming. Gaming is the environment in which our kids will spend a good portion of their school years, and which may also define much of their adult work lives as software developers become more successful at integrating game mechanics into other on- and offline activities.  We can best serve our kids if we not only embrace gaming as part of literacy, but also find ways to integrate it with the traditional literacy of reading.

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There’s nothing like the beginning of a school year to illuminate gaps in your family’s, um….discipline. After a couple of rocky weeks inspired us to take a closer look at our family’s rhythms and regimes, I found myself noting the central role that iPhones and iPads have played in all aspects of our disciplinary approach, acting as:

1. Band-aid: When we’re in a setting that provokes disciplinary challenges, like a line-up or a restaurant, there is nothing like handing over an I-thing to keep otherwise boisterous kids calm and manageable.
2. Carrot: “As soon as you’ve finished cleaning up the playroom you can have some iPad time.” That’s the kind of inducement you hear regularly in our house, where the promise of 1-on-1 time with the iPad is our most consistent motivational technique.
3. Stick: The flip side of the carrot is, of course, our use of iPad and iPhone deprivation as the number one punishment in our family. Immediate misdeeds get immediate removal of the iDevices currently in use. Medium-size misdeeds get a daylong ban from iDevices. Major misdeeds mean at least 24 hours without an iDevice. Oh, what suffering!
4. Threat: What goes around comes around: after hearing me threaten (or enact) iDevice deprivation as a frequent consequence for his misbehaviour, Little Peanut recently threatened to hide my iPhone and iPad as retaliation for a recent disciplinary conflict.
5. Lifeline: I often use my iPhone or iPad to google for kid management tips when I’m faced with a sticky situation.
6. Gold star: You might have settled for stickers as your reward for a job well done, but when we are really trying to get the kids to focus on a particular behaviour, their reward chart pays out in apps. Free apps, mind you. But it’s a very tangible pay-off for working hard on a challenge they are otherwise reluctant to embrace.
7. Reward chart: Besides serving as the prize, the iPad can serve as the chart itself. I’ve been experimenting with various iPhone, iPad and web apps that support digital reward charts for kids. So far none of the iDevice apps are as satisfying as my preferred online chart system, Goal For It, but I would prefer to use a device-based app so am eager to hear suggestions of tools that are visual and sync to the web and/or other iDevices (so mum and dad can keep their charts in sync).
8. Trigger: The iPad, in particular, often acts as a trigger for negative outbursts. Frustration at losing a game, resistance to putting away a device when we need to leave the house, insistence on buying an inappropriate game, sibling battles for control of a given device — all of these have led to meltdowns at one time or another.

Given the central role our iDevices play in so many aspects of our disciplinary regime, and in particular their frequent role as an outburst trigger, it should come as no surprise that we are reevaluating the amount of access our kids have had to the Magical iPad. (You want to convince me it’s really magical? Make my kids’ temper tantrums disappear.) I’ll be back soon with a follow-up post on the different approaches we’re considering.

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Last week I wrote about 5 tech-related kid failures. I somehow managed to leave out the one that is currently the biggest source of irritation in our house: autotunitis.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the disorder, autotunitis is a vocal condition afflicting children whose exposure to music has been dominated by artists who rely heavily on autotune. Tracks by these artists, such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, typically sound somewhat nasal and synthetic. In some cases this sound is a byproduct of autotune, while in others it is a deliberate aesthetic choice.

Children who frequently listen to autotuned tracks grow accustomed to this nasal, synthetic quality, which they (consciously or unconsciously) reproduce in their own singing. The effect may be comical (when applied to Baby Beluga) or annoying (when applied to 24/7 covers of Firework.)

Technology analysts may anticipate a future moment in which autotune becomes extinct, not because autotunitis leads to a widespread rejection of the offending sound, but rather, because autotunitis may render it unnecessary. Today’s singers turn to a machine to make their voices sound mechanically perfect. Tomorrow’s singers will have assimilated the mechanical voice into their own biological voice boxes.

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Live by the sword, die by the sword. Today I’m brutally overtired because our 7-year-old kept us up for an hour in the middle of the night. Cause: nightmares inspired by the iPad game Plants vs. Zombies.

If this feels like divine retribution for exposing my kids to brain-rotting video games, it’s far from the only new-school parenting challenge. Sure, we think about the big issues, like whether kids are ruining their reputations on Facebook, or losing the ability to write full sentences that don’t include the acronym OMG. But what about the little things — the tech-created personality quirks, defects and incapacities that are cropping up among the tech generation? Along with video game nightmares, here are 5 kid failures that I’ve observed:

1. Handset incompetence: Whereby kids grow up so used to talking on speaker phones that they seem incapable of understanding that phones have an earpiece and a mouthpiece.
2. Ad susceptibility: Raised on Tivo and DVDS, children grow up unexposed to advertising, and therefore take every advertisement literally, resulting in family bankruptcy after they act on every infomercial viewed.
3. Googlecentricity: Since Mom or Dad always google the answer to questions like “when were dinosaurs alive?” and “who invented the stapler?”, kids are unable to accept ambiguous answers to questions like “what happens when I die?” and “what do dogs think about?”
4. Monitor smudging: With Android phones, iPhones and iPads fast becoming the most frequently used devices by the under-10 set, kids fail to grasp the idea of a non-touch screen, and insist on touching every TV or monitor that comes within reach.
5. 140-character brains: Kids get so used to their parents tweeting their cutest utterances that they learn to formulate their every thought in 140-charcter increments. Come to think of it, this problem isn’t limited to kids.

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When I first wrote this post in October 2006, LilPnut was only a few months old, and didn’t even have his twitter handle yet. (Who can blame him? Twitter had barely been invented.) Almost five years later we have lots more experience traveling with the kids, and are much less ambitious about integrating business and personal travel. (Partly because it’s harder to keep a 5-year-old quiet, even in the era of iPads.) But I still had a couple new tips to add here, and I think the rest of the post is as relevant as ever, especially to parents with younger children.

I’ve recently become an adventurer in the world of business travel with baby — in this case, our son, now almost 4 months old. He’s now attended three different conferences, and from these experiences I’ve gleaned a few bits of wisdom that I wanted to capture and share:

1. Think twice. Business travel is WAY easier without a kid, so don’t undertake it unless you really need to. That said, don’t let the challenges of business travel dissuade you from doing what’s best for your own work and family — particularly if traveling with your child will allow you to continue providing the benefits of breastfeeding.
2. Start small. My first conference-with-kid experience was an informal, local, one-day event (let’s hear it for BarCamp Vancouver!) that let me alpha test our baby’s ability to quietly endure a meeting before I braved taking him on the road.
3. Know your kid. Think about whether he or she can be quiet in meetings, and also whether you can meet her needs (for food, entertainment, and attention) while in a business setting. I happen to have a very easy and quiet baby, but I sure wouldn’t bring my three-year-old to one of these things. And since kids are constantly changing, you need to re-think your kid’s road-worthiness before each and every trip.
4. Defer to your colleagues. If you’re attending a conference or client meeting with your kid, make sure to put your colleagues’ comfort first. Identify a location where you can nurse or entertain your kid if he starts to cry or disturb the proceedings.
5. Buddy up. At the last conference I attended I was lucky to have a buddy — the lovely Katrin Verclas — who jumped in to lend a hand. Katrin volunteered to hold the baby at a few key moments, including dinnertime (my first two-handed dinner in months!!) Having the support of a buddy made all the difference to my experience.
6. Forewarned is forearmed. Let meeting organizers or clients know if you’ll be bringing your kid, and give them a chance to tell you if their setting is not child friendly. When I attended the fabulous Online Community Summit, I checked with conference organizers before registering; their welcoming attitude helped me feel comfortable about participating. After the success of that venture, I didn’t worry about forewarning the folks at the Blog Business Summit; they’ve been fantastically accommodating, but I’m sure they’d have appreciated a chance to consider the challenges in advance.
7. Scale your expectations. If you attend a conference with your kid, be prepared to miss big chunks of presentations and social events so that you can step out and attend to your kid’s needs.
8. Scale your budget. Be prepared to spend more money than you usually would to make your trip as easy as possible — stay at the nearest hotel, get valet parking, order room service. And if you’re evaluating whether a conference or client visit is worth undertaking with child, consider not whether the event is worth the cost in and of itself – consider if it will still be worth the cost of a no-expense-spared approach, even if you miss half the conference sessions.
9. Your kid is part of your presentation. Whenever you attend a conference or client meeting, you think about your self-presentation. When you’re attending with a kid, your kid becomes part of that presentation. So make sure your kid has a clean face, clean clothes, and behaves well.
10. Connect with your kid. Don’t forget to interact with him. or there’s no point in having him along.
11. Connect with your colleagues. If you travel with a well-behaved kid, you’ll find that many of your colleagues will be warm and welcoming — particularly the other parents in the room. Make the most of this chance to connect with colleagues on a personal level: one of the things I’ve enjoyed about traveling with my baby is the chance to hear from other parents about their own experiences juggling work and family. How else would I have left a business blogging summit with the URL of a great attachment parenting blog? I’ve really appreciated hearing from other moms who remember the challenges of life with a new baby, and whose support — whether it’s holding the baby so I can use the bathroom, or cheering me on for trying this juggling act — remind me that I’m not the only woman out there trying to combine work and motherhood.
12. Accept non-acceptance. While the vast majority of your colleagues are likely to be encouraging and supportive, some people may not be happy to see a baby at a business event. Accept that some people aren’t going to like seeing your baby, the same way they might not like what you’ve got to say or what you’re wearing. Anticipate those reactions, and know in advance which accommodations you’re willing to make for others. But don’t let concern about other people’s reactions push you into sharing more information about your circumstances than you feel comfortable disclosing, or into a decision that jeopardizes your child’s well-being or your professional or personal integrity.
13. UPDATE: Draw a line between work and family time. Combining family travel with business travel can be a great (and economical) experience, but it works best when you are very clear about how and when to draw the line. Maybe you’re unavailable to your family for the first three days of a conference, but the next ten days are family time; maybe mornings are for meetings and afternoons are for kids and fun. Just make sure that you, your spouse and your colleagues are all agreed on those limits beforehand, and that you communicate the expectations to your kids.
14. UPDATE: Make room for your family. We’ve had terrific success lining up housing swaps in four different cities, mostly using Craigslist. Unlike a conference or business hotel — which may be only marginally welcoming to children, and crawling with colleagues who will give you the hairy eyeball if your kids go tearing down a hallway — a home exchange ensures your family has a home base while you’re on the road. If you can swap with a family that has similarly-aged kids, you’re likely to land in a setting that is well set-up for your needs.
15. Cheer yourself on. When I first started using my laptop at conferences, about ten years ago, people used to ask me to put it away — they found the key tapping disturbing. Ten years later, everyone has their laptops out to take meeting notes (or check their e-mail!) That culture shift happened gradually — and a similar culture shift has to happen around children. The more that thoughtful parents include their well-behaved children in their professional lives, the more we’ll break down the cultural wall that separates the public and private spheres — a wall that has historically served to keep women and men in separate worlds. So give yourself a cheer for bringing baby along: you’re not just helping your family or business, you’re helping make our culture stronger, healthier and more human.

Originally published October 27, 2006.

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This weekend Little Sweetie asked whether she can have my computer when I die. I had to explain that she is unlikely to want it: by the time I die, my current computer will be useless.

“But how about this,” I suggested instead. “When I die, you can have whatever computer I have at the time. Although I want somebody else to clean it first.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You don’t want to have to read love letters from my old boyfriends or journal entries about how crazy I was after having a baby.”

She was satisfied with this deal, but I want to add a rider. About six months ago, Sweetie and I went to see an exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery by Song Dong, titled Waste Not. It consisted of a lifetime’s worth of objects — everything from shoes to plastic bottles to furniture — as hoarded over a lifetime by the artist’s mother.

When the time comes, I will doubtless leave Little Sweetie and Little Peanut to contend with an epic collection of physical detritus, judging from both our current house and my genetic predisposition to packrattitude. When my grandmother died my mother and I were cleaning out her apartment, we opened a closet that began with a layer of string-handled shopping bags. My grandmother loved the shopping bags that Sak’s, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s and Bloomingdales dispensed, and she could never bear to throw one away. We pulled out the layer shopping bags to find out what was in the closet, and found another layer of shopping bags. And then another. It turns out that if you live in New York your entire life, and you can’t bear to throw out a single shopping bag from a New York department store, you accumulate a closet’s worth of string-handled bags.

The shopping bags were (relatively) easy to let go of, but not so the other treasures we found in that apartment. There were generations of “I can’t throw this away” embedded in her various cupboards, from my great-grandfather’s childhood sketchbook to his grandfather’s newspaper clippings. From this experience I realized the urgency of regular purging: what you inherit from your parents may be treasures or it may be clutter, but what they leave from their parents is by definition an heirloom.

That realization may have inspired me to be modestly diligent about curbing my tendencies toward the hoarding of physical objects, but it does nothing to slow the rate of digital accumulation. On the contrary, I go to enormous lengths to ensure that I hold onto every email, file and floppy disk I’ve every had.

One day, this pile of digital crap will get passed along to Little Sweetie and Little Sweetie. I could put all the really incriminating stuff in a separate folder and ask a couple of good friends to ensure it gets deleted (or at least kept out of my kids’ hands) upon my timely or untimely demise, but the kids are still going to be handed a lifetime’s worth of memos, emails, podcasts, half-written short stories, tweets, journal entries, meeting notes, read and unread research papers, hip hop tracks, interview transcriptions, photos, bookmarks, torrented TV shows, university essays, digital receipts, client reports, blog posts, book proposals, web page wireframes, jotted-down ideas, family video, graduate research notes, craft projects, travel bookings, Broadway cast albums, screenshots and php snippets. Just thinking about the volume of bits I will leave behind is enough to kill me now.

And the very worst part is that unlike the family memorabilia my grandmother accumulated, this collection will fit on a single hard drive or web server: my kids will have no excuse for not maintaining it and passing it on. The main chore will be ensuring that the stored data will be accessible to future generations rather than decaying on a single drive. There’s a great potential business for perpetual digital crypts that archive your loved ones’ digital remains and keep it in viable storage formats.

How much value do we really get from hanging onto our files in perpetuity? Maybe my archival impulse stems from the fact that my parents both spent their careers digging through other people’s documentary remains. Maybe it’s the digital equivalent of a closet full of shopping bags. Maybe it’s a way to cheat death, metaphorically or (as per the premise of Caprica) even literally. Maybe it’s proof that social media fuels narcissistic pathology.

But Song Dong gives me hope. If a lifetime’s worth of physical objects can be transformed into an art installation, what might an artist create with a lifetime’s worth of data? From video projections to an immersive landscape of the voice and music of the dead, to touchscreens that let you leaf through someone else’s files, to walls covered in printed-out emails and photos: that’s just the beginning of the creative possibilities.

I won’t curse my kids with the expectation that they transform my digital detritus into a world-renowned work of art. But I suspect it’s not (solely) that public recognition that made Song Dong’s Waste Not significant to the artist. Art is a way of knowing, a way of coming to terms with the world and your place in it. If curating your mother’s material possessions can help you know her — and yourself — then what might you learn from grappling with your mother’s digital remains? That’s for us to wonder, and for our children to find out.

Read more about better living with social media by visiting Love your life online

Our family spends a lot of time online. I’m constantly astonished by the way our kids will casually say, “You can tweet that, Daddy” or “Don’t Facebook that, Mummy!” the way I might have asked my mom to stop talking so loudly in a restaurant. Our kids are only 4 and 7, so I’m nothing less than delighted that they already direct us on how to represent them online — or conversely, to respect their privacy.

The ongoing conversation in our home about how to use social media — and in particular, how to do so in a way that is both safe and enjoyable for our kids — has helped us evolve a de facto social media policy governing how we engage with social media as a family. I decided it was time to go from de facto to actual, recorded policy. I found some great resources for thinking about corporate social media policies on Inc., Social Media Today and PolicyTool.net, and used these to help me think about the kinds of issues we might want to cover in our family social media policy.

Our policy is in text below. It refers to our household as the Palindrome (our nickname for our house) and to our kids’ online handles, so I’ve created a more generic, downloadable version here (RTF) that you can adapt for your own family. By the way, I am not a lawyer, so I am in no way suggesting that this is a legally binding document. But hey, if your kids are suing you over your rules around Facebook, you’ve got bigger problems than my lack of a law degree.

A Family Social Media Policy for the Palindrome (Samuel-Cottingham family)

It is the responsibility of all residents of the Palindrome to familiarize themselves with this social media policy. Those residents who are not able to read may request assistance reading and interpreting the social media policy until such a time as they are literate. Palindrome residents are subject to this policy until they reach the age of 18 or become fully self-supporting, whichever comes later. This policy holds whether they identify themselves as residents of the Palindrome or participate in social media activities under a pseudonym.

This policy applies to all social media, online communities, networked video games, and Internet-connected devices. This includes but is not limited to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, the PlayStation Network, Xbox LIVE, and GameCenter apps. This policy is additional to any other family policies governing use of TV, e-mail, smartphones, videogames, tablets and the Internet. Its policies hold with respect to all family members’ online activities, whether they are executed in the course of schoolwork, professional responsibilities or personal use.

Use of social media and online tools

The use of social media and other networked tools is part of our family life and relationships. The respectful, creative and safe use of social and interactive media is encouraged, as is the thoughtful and conscious decision to refrain from using any electronic device or online tool at a specific time, or generally. Each member of our family is expected to determine his or her own preferred set of on- and offline activities and to control the persona or personas s/he chooses to maintain online. For minor residents, these online activities must take place within the bounds of safety and good judgement, as determined by Mummy and Daddy. Before participating in social media, joining any online network or registering as a user of an online game, minor residents must obtain the permission of Mummy or Daddy.

Confidentiality

All conversations, activities and events at the Palindrome shall be treated as confidential.  Off-site conversations and activities shared by members of our household shall likewise be covered by this expectation of confidentiality. Confidentiality may be waived by any member of the household upon explicit request. Do not post, tweet, Facebook or otherwise share any images, utterances or activities of family members without their consent. This applies to both parents and minor residents; minor residents may grant or deny any request to post their utterances, images or creations to blogs, Facebook, Twitter or other online media. Likewise, we must respect the wishes of our family and friends regarding the confidentiality of our social engagements and conversations.

Privacy

It is the responsibility of all residents and visitors to the Palindrome to safeguard the personally identifiable information of minor residents. Each resident of the Palindrome will be restricted in their disclosure of personally identifiable information until such a time as they have proven their alertness to “stranger danger”; the scope of permissable sharing will be commensurate with each resident’s age and capacity for self-protection. Personally identifiable information includes the dates and locations of upcoming vacations or travel, names or locations of schools and after-school programs, the legal names of minor family members or depictions of the faces of minor family members.

All postings that reference minor residents should refer to them by their online handles: Lil Sweetie and Lil Peanut. Images of minor residents are to be shared only within password-protected or limited membership circles online (for example, a limited circle of Facebook friends).

Disclaimers

When posting content to the Internet, all members of the Palindrome household should make it clear that their online postings represent their opinions alone. When speaking on behalf of other family members, please be explicit about which family members are represented in the post.

Intellectual property

All members of the Palindrome are encouraged to publish their online content under Creative Commons licenses. When violating copyright laws (for example, by downloading protected video or audio content) any member of the household may be asked to provide a clear, internally consistent argument for that violation; minor residents may ask for help reading and interpreting relevant materials on intellectual property laws and alternative copyright regimes. Where warranted by the volume or content of illegally or illicitly obtained content, residents may be requested to provide their justification in writing. Minor residents may request justification from parents as well as vice versa.

Passwords

No member of the Palindrome household will attempt to obtain, through deception or observation, the password of any other family member. This includes but is not limited to e-mail logins, social media logins, iPad and iPhone unlock codes and iTunes store accounts.

Assistance

All members of the Palindrome may request technical, creative or instructional support from other members in their use of social media, online gaming or other interactive tools. These requests may be subject to the availability and priorities of other family members. Wherever possible, Mummy and Daddy will endeavour to assist the minor residents in their safe exploration of the Internet and other networked and electronic devices.

Feedback

All residents of the Palindrome are welcome to comment on this social media policy, and to request future iterations or amendments. Minor residents are encouraged to provide retrospective appreciation for their parents’ efforts at including them in the governance of family Internet use, and for the general awesomeness of the level of technology to which they have access at a young age.

Creating your family policy

If you are interested in developing your own family social media policy, you can download a draft family social media policy in RTF form (adapted to be slightly more generic). Please leave a comment or send me a tweet if you decide to use or adapt it – I’d love to hear how it works or how you’ve amended it.

If you’re looking for more resources that can help you think about how to set boundaries around your kids’ use of social media, I highly recommend the great articles and tips at Common Sense Media.  And if you want a policy for your kids’ offline activities, you might want to check out the Terms of Use for our toy cupboard.

Read more about better living with social media by visiting Love your life online

When you’ve got kids, business travel is especially stressful. It’s hard for them to have mum or dad away, and it’s hard for you to miss them. Here are 5 ways that technology can help:

1. Google your trip: Before you hit the road, spend a few minutes showing your kids where you’ll be going. Google your destination and show them a few images so they can picture the city you will be visiting or even the hotel where you will be staying. Use Google Maps to show your child where you will be and how it relates geographically to your hometown. This is a great way to make geography real and meaningful to your child.
2. Download a bedtime story: Maybe you don’t want to lug the complete Beatrix Potter collection, but you can download one of your kid’s favorite books to your e-reader or laptop. Call or Skype at bedtime, and ask your spouse or babysitter to turn the pages of your child’s storybook while you read the words on your virtual edition.
3. Make a movie: When my husband is on the road, he often shoots a short movie for the kids with his phone or webcam. It might be a walk down the Vegas strip, or a puppet show he puts on in his hotel room (don’t forget to pack the finger puppets!) It lets the kids know he’s thinking about them and helps him feel like they are along for the ride.
4. Make a playlist: Our family bedtime features a now-standard set of bedtime songs. The kids prefer it when we sing for them ourselves, but in a pinch we can pull up their favorite bedtime songs on the iPhone so they won’t object when (unlike their dad) I forget the words to U2′s Pride.
5. Yelp a souvenir: You can count on the airport newsstand if you want to return home with a plastic airplane or a stuffed mascot for the local sports team. But it’s much nicer to bring the kids a small souvenir that relates to one of your passions. If you’ve got even a 20 minute break in your meeting schedule, use Yelp to find the nearest art supply shop, toy store or hobby shop and pick up a gift that reflects your child’s latest interest. Or better yet, Yelp before you leave home to find a really outstanding craftsperson or toy store in the city you’ll be visiting so that you can return with something that is unique to your destination.

Of course, the number one way technology can reduce the stress of business travel is by keeping you at home. These 10 ways to use social media to get the most out of business travel can help.

Read more about better living with social media by visiting Love your life online