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Ever think about the amount of time our kids spend texting? You probably have. Have you thought about what life lessons they learn?
Paying attention doesn’t mean looking, listening or responding. Kids will say they do pay attention to the person they’re with, they can hear. But real paying attention and communicating attention involves nonverbal behavior, like eye contact, facial expression and gesture. It involves actually listening to the person’s words, not “tuning in” occasionally. It means being responsive to questions or to the end of an idea in real time.
I can treat everyone the same. Kids text wherever they are – with their friends, at a table in the cafeteria, in the living room with a parent, in a doctor’s office with the doctor in the room. There’s no difference between friends, non-friends, family, parents and “authority figures.”