From the Editor's Desk: Fathers of techies

I'd wondered how long it'd take before I ended up linking to my wife from this space. That time has come.

Today, as hopefully you've remembered, is Father's Day. I've got two daughters. I've got more smartphones and tablets and computers and other geeky stuff than probably one person should have -- even one with my job. Inevitably, this tech ends up in dirty, sticky, little hands, to sometimes disastrous, sometime hilarious results.

It's amazing to watch a child not yet 2 years old swipe to unlock a phone. Whether she figured it out on her own, or saw her sister or mother or me do it, I'm not sure. But here's a kid who can't say more than a dozen words and for whom not falling down that many times a day is quite the accomplishment. To watch her pick up a phone with purpose, quickly unlock it and then proceed to rearrange the home screen beyond all recognition is worth the aggravation of taking an hour trying to restore things to a semi-usable state.

It's also interesting to see how far a toddler can throw a glass smartphone, much to the chagrin of the device in question.

Yes. My kids, like yours, are geniuses, smarter than any kids before them. They swipe to unlock. They use apps. They watch videos. They fling birds at pigs. They draw. They learn.

Back to my wife, though. She's now the local columnist at the newspaper where I worked for nearly a decade. (She's been there for 13 years or so now, previously as an editor.) She's also inundated with the ridiculous amount of tech in this house. Her most frequent question to me after "What the hell is that?" usually is "OK, then what does it do?" But, like any good wife out there, she helps this over-teched dad keep things in perspective. From her column today:

I want (the dads of my generation) to get credit for teaching their kids that picking on someone just because you can, or because everyone else is doing it, is wrong every time, on the playground and online.

I want them to get credit for teaching their kids to use a computer and an iPad and for making them put those things down and go play outside for an equal number of minutes.

... I want them to get credit for teaching their kids that without the Pixies, there never would have been Nirvana.

Well said, wife. Happy Father's Day, y'all.

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