Our youngest child turned 21 a couple months ago. Serious parenting is over for us. Our experiences differ in many ways from those my parents had a generation ago. The most significant difference stems from the advent of smartphones. We became an iPhone family in July 2007 when the first generation iPhone was released. My wife, Karen, our two oldest children, and I signed up in quick order before the end of that year. Only our youngest, at nine years old, had to wait. But really only for one year. All the children of most families we knew had smartphones by age 11 or 12.

Smartphones provided our children a higher degree of autonomy for them and well-being for me and Karen.  So long as they responsibly took care of their iPhones and carried them as they engaged in extracurricular activities or went out with friends we let them do things on their own. They were only a quick text or phone call check in away. Less wondering where the kids were or what they were up to on the parenting side of the equation.

Back in the days Karen and I went out the only way for parents to check in was through land line phones, or, while traveling, by postcards.  I took one trip to Hong Kong, the Philippines and Australia in the late 70’s. The itinerary I gave my parents had us staying at a hotel in Manilla.  On the second day our itinerary said we’d be at a hotel that had a bomb go off killing several people in the hotel lobby. Unbeknownst to my parents I didn’t check in to that hotel.  My traveling friend Jim and I had met up with a friend of ours in Manilla and she invited us to stay with her family while  there. A fortuitous change in travel plans. I didn’t hear the news about the bombing locally, but my parents were sick with worry until I finally checked in with them when our travels got us to Brisbane, Australia.

Here are a few anecdotes about how smartphones kept us connected with our kids.

FaceTime calls from Veronica from India

In 2015 Veronica stopped out from Stanford for a term to travel to the northern India town of McLeod Gange.  Her travels were not easy for a single young woman.  It was helpful for her and us that she could Facetime us from halfway around the world at any time of day to let us know she was ok or to work out changes in her travel plans. The age of the video phone call had finally arrived and we were very thankful for it. Veronica was as well.

Texting from San Francisco flight to Paris while Abbey is flying back to Boston

In May 2016 Abbey did a revisit to Oberlin College as part of her college selection process. As it turned out Karen and I were traveling to Paris from San Francisco the day she left Oberlin to travel back to her school in Concord, New Hampshire.  Her flights back were Cleveland to La Guardia and then La Guardia to Boston arriving by 3:30pm so she could catch the scheduled 5:00pm airporter bus back to school.  Best laid plans.

Abbey’s flight out of Cleveland was delayed due to a mechanical issue and then due to weather. She arrived over two hours late to La Guardia missing her scheduled connection to Boston. She was good enough to text us as the frustrating delays mounted.  Surprisingly, were were able to receive her text messages while on our United flight airborne over Canada.  By the time she landed in La Guardia our flight was over Greenland. She continued to text us and we continued to receive the texts.  She was able to get rebooked on the last flight to Boston that evening, but needed to navigate the airport to get to her new gate.  She arrived at gate C8 and was leaving at gate C20.  We thought that was a simple walk along the C concourse. But Abbey started texting us about having to take a bus and we misconstrued her texts at the time that she was going to take a bus from LGA to BOS.  As you can see from the map below she indeed needed to take a bus, but from one C Concourse to a second…only at LGA. What a mess of an airport.

Abbey’s late night route from one C Concourse to another at LGA.

Anyway, we were frantically texting her as we flew over Greenland and she was confused about how to get to her next flight.  In the end, she made that last flight, arrived in Boston near midnight, and took an Uber ride 70miles to Concord arriving about 1am in the morning east coast time. The Uber option in today’s world was another saving grace.

Tracking Veronica’s hike along the John Muir trail

Our oldest daughter graduated from college in 2016.  In late June of that year she made a 217 mile hike over 17 days along the John Muir Trail, a small portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, with one of her good college friends, Emily.  We, along with Emily’s parents, were concerned for their safety hiking in such a remote area for so long.

The girls purchased a satellite syncing GPS device to take with them.  Each day at 5pm it would automatically turn on and send us, the parents, a new location code.  So long as we saw it progressing south along the trail when we entered the location code into Google maps we could relax and assume all was going well, or at least ok.  The map below shows the progress we mapped.  The hike did go well and technology kept us parents relatively relaxed.

Veronica and Emily’s Satellite GPS coordinate daily posts as they hiked the John Muir Trail.

Funding text requests from my girls as my plane is taxiing down the runway

One of the deeply nested corollaries to Murpy’s Law has to be that your daughter will text you in dire need of funds at the same moment your two hour flight is taxiing or actually accelerating for take off.  I believe this has happened to me over five times in the past three years.  Amazingly enough, in each instance I have been able to get logged in to my BofA account and have the funds transfers made. In these days WiFi was still not available during flights. Now our ability to be connected at all times, even while flying, is almost a given.

Chronic Cracked Screens

Finally, the biggest problem we had was keeping our girls from having cracked iPhone screens.  After about three for each of our girls we said the next one is at your cost.  That would be a big hit to their allowance. It was surprising how long each felt they could go dealing with cracked screens before they sought replacement. Whenever I saw them with friends I’d survey how many of their friends had cracked screens. Often it was most of them.