In this day in age of technology, we have so many ways to communicate in an abbreviated way of what we are saying.
LOL, BTW, OMW, TL, DR, I feel you, no worries, and my personal favorite, OMG.
With all of these abbreviated ways of communicating, are we really saying what we mean and meaning what we say?
I love texting; however, that being said, I will respond with one line to a book-long text. Does that mean I am not interested? No. Does that mean that I did not read the whole message? No. But I realize it probably does not fulfill the person on the other end with their needs. My preference isn’t to communicate in-depth via text. My 10-year-old daughter on the other hand…
She’s begging for a cell phone. She has an iPad and she can message and communicate with a few friends on there but is not a full access forum. My worry is, how do you teach lingo talk and appropriate etiquette? This is a conversation my husband and I have regularly. Obviously, we want her to realize her words matter, and not to participate in any cyberbullying. Then I was discussing with a friend, and she replied: “She’s just like you, and you have to zoom out to get the whole picture.”
Zoom out? I have never heard this term and what does this mean? I had a lengthy discussion with her about the zoom out phenome and it has changed my life. Now I am trying to implement it in my life and project the positivity of the message onto my daughter.
“Zoom out” is defined as:
To see beyond your current ‘reality’ to many potentially more helpful perspectives.
We spend so much of our life zooming in: over-analyzing our playdate that went awry, our family dinner that no one ate, our social interactions with other parents, our clothing choices, something we said in error. We spend all of this time zooming in focusing on the negative, and the should of, could of, would of’s, when really we should zoom out. My friend said she knows I read her whole message, she knows I care, she knows I also might be busy at work, but that she wants me to acknowledge her text.
When you are so self-absorbed, you can’t even visualize someone else’s life. The general weight of motherhood alone makes most of us a little scatterbrained. Add on soccer practice, working, dinner, pets, self-care, laundry, etc. Even though we are “busy,” we should never be too busy to zoom out and see the whole picture. Does that mom need a friend? Is she struggling? Does she need a girls’ night out? A date night with her spouse? Or just a no-frills park day?
Connecting with those that mean the most to me, usually happens IRL, not on social media. And that is the message I hope to pass on to my daughter.
