Just like many other things in life, technology can be an enemy or an ally. It can be used for good or evil. Here are 10 things my wife, Susan, and I do that turn technology from a potential foe to a worthwhile friend.
1. We each send a good-night text to our girls who are in college or working almost every night. Often, it’s simply a “’Night, love you soooo much.”
2. Susan posts comments and pics on our daughters’ Facebook pages. Our two sons are 16 and 15 and don’t have Facebook accounts yet.
3. Susan and I will have Facetime with our girls away at school. The iPhone, Skype, and iChat are great tools to use to keep the relational touch when distance separates us and our children. It’s nice just to see each other “face-to-face” and chat for a few minutes, even if there is nothing pressing to talk about.
4. Recording a silly audio message and texting it to our kids is fun, too. During a Family Minute radio recording session recently, I did my best foreign accent for one of the scripts and texted it to my children for a good laugh.
5. Picture taking with the cell phone can be entertaining as well. At the mall recently, I put on the weirdest pair of shoes and Susan took a picture of them and sent them to our kids. They really thought I bought them!
6. I sometimes send my kids a short video message from my phone just to let them know how much I love them. Other times I will send a video if I am at a fun concert or event, that I want them to feel a part of.
7. Our oldest daughter, 20 years old, enjoys tweeting as I do. Sometimes we’ll tweet about seeing each other and retweet each others’ tweets.
8. When one of us in the family sees a funny or inspirational YouTube video we like, we’ll take a quick break from what we’re doing to share it with each other.
9. Susan and I take pictures when we are at events or other activities of interest and send them to our girls at college, so they can see what their brothers and hometown friends are up to.
10. New apps for our phones are introduced every day. Sure, there are a lot of entertaining ones, but there are also some practical and very good educational tools as well. We’ll sometimes share new apps we discover with one another.
