July 29, 2022
By Ekta R. Garg
Unlike the majority of parents of teens these days, Sixteen didn’t get her cell phone until this year. My husband and I were pretty single-minded about the fact that she really didn’t need it until she started to drive. Did she complain through the years? Yes. But we let her know, gently, kindly, that we were the grownups in charge of making decisions for her. If we felt like waiting on the cell phone was in her best interest, we would do so.
I’ll admit, there have been several times since she started high school and went back to school in person when I thought it would be handy for her to have a phone. It would have been so easy to text her with questions about after-school schedules or to let her know something had changed. Since she’s gotten her phone, I’ve taken advantage of that fact by doing a quick check-in on days when she’s out of the house.
I have to wonder, though, if my older child having a cell phone has made me worry about her more.
Yesterday, I had to take Fourteen someplace. Sixteen was at drama camp working as an assistant director. The time camp would normally get out was at same time I had to drive Fourteen to meet her friends, so I asked the drama teacher if she would give Sixteen a ride home. Because the camp is not far from our house, she agreed without hesitation.
I took Fourteen to the movie theater to meet her friends, chatted with one of the other moms for about 10 minutes, swung by the grocery store for a few items, and then came home. Sixteen hadn’t arrived yet, which surprised me a little but not much. The drama teacher is very good at what she does and excited about it; I figured they were probably still working on the play the kids in the camp have been rehearsing.
A small part me wouldn’t let it go, though, so after a few minutes at home I picked up my phone and called Sixteen. No answer. Again, I wasn’t thrown completely. A true Gen Z’er in this regard, she says she’s more likely to respond to a text than a phone call. So I sent her a text, and my phone dutifully noted that my text had been Delivered.
I waited for that notification to change to Read. It didn’t. Not for several minutes.
In the ordinary scheme of life, when we talk about five minutes here or 10 minutes there, it doesn’t seem like a long time. When you’re waiting for your child to come home safely and have entrusted her care to someone else, though, those five or 10 minutes stretch and pull like caramel. Things start to get a little sticky if you have to wait too long.
I debated about calling the drama teacher and went for a compromise; I texted her instead. In our ways of cell phone etiquette today, I feel like a phone call probably raises more alarm than a text. A text is just a single block in a long train of a conversation. Ongoing. Casual. Just checking in.
Fortunately, the teacher texted back within a minute or two and confirmed they were, in fact, still rehearsing. She mentioned that Sixteen had said she had no other commitments for the afternoon, and I said she was right. As I looked at the clock, though, I knew my child, even with her immense patience for the teacher and the young kids in the play, would be hungry.
I was able to move on to other things in my work day. As soon as I heard that Sixteen was okay, that she was safe and just doing what she’d been hired to do for this week and next, I could focus on the practical aspects of timing her lunch so she could eat soon after she got home. Normal tasks. I could handle those.
It’s harder to worry.
By contrast, when I dropped Fourteen (who doesn’t have a phone) with her friends, she went and watched a movie with them. After that, the group of girls went home together and had a sleepover. I thought about Fourteen a few times throughout the day and into the evening because sleepovers make her a little nervous. I’d reassured her on the drive to meet her friends that if, at any point, she wanted to come home, all she had to do was call. I wouldn’t question it, and neither would anyone else.
I didn’t hear again from Fourteen until I picked her up this morning from the sleepover, but I didn’t think too much about it. My level of worry was on a different scale and a different breed than what I felt about Sixteen. For my older child, I’ll admit, the one thought that kept going around in my head in lazy ellipses was, “Why didn’t she text me back? What’s keeping her from responding to me?”
I wonder if other parents have felt this way, that the addition of cell phones to the mix of family conversations has heightened their awareness of all the things that might happen. It doesn’t help that I read a fair number of thrillers, a genre where things are engineered to go wrong for a long time before they ever go right again (if ever.) Add to that my overactive imagination, and, well…that makes me a worried mom.
I try to keep my worry in check. Try to remind myself of my own childhood when I would go with my friends or be at school events for hours at a time without talking to my family. They trusted that I was okay, and I did the same.
At some point, I’m going to have to do that for Sixteen when she goes to college. I know I’ll blink and will probably be pouring my heart out in a Growth Chart about that day about two years from now. Two years. That gives me enough time to get used to worrying in the right proportion, right?
I hope so.