On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 09:46:00 EST, Scott
wrote:


Lately, DD has taken to IM-img (Instant Messaging) her
friends. In principle, I suppose, I have nothing against
this, although I prefer it when she emails, at that
leaves a virtual trail that is lacking with IM.

I'm just curious what others' have done as far as
restricting IM. DD has a friend who as far as I can
tell would DIE without IM -- and when DD is at
the friend's house, that's mostly what they do, to
the detriment of things like homework. (This
friend is also, I think, only very lightly supervised,
but that's another post entirely). That's a problem
I think we have a handle on.

Also, I assume there are software packages one can
put on your machine to capture and hold the IM
messages. Has anyone a recommendation? We
have an iMac running panther, or maybe tiger.
That's what she does her IM-ing on, the computer.
We have no cell phone, so we've not had to deal
with phone messaging.

MSN Instant Messenger has an option to save all messages. So does
Trillian (which is a client for Windows that does messaging for MSN,
AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, and I think something else too.) I guess I assumed
they all did.

Our kids are older, so our response has more been to take it up
ourselves because this is another possible medium in which our kids
can talk to us. I can see that some young people really like the
assumption/culture of simplified spelling and grammar that goes with
instant messaging, and I also know young people who turn up their
noses at IM-speak and choose to use proper capitalization and
punctuation. In working with students of high school age and older
in computer laboratories, I've discovered that I need to tell them not
to IM during class and to enforce that expectation. At home, the
behaviour I try to model includes letting the person who comes up to
talk to me know that I'm in an IM conversation with so-and-so, passing
on greetings, then if the person wants to talk saying "Just a minute.
Let me finish this conversation and then I can pay attention to you"
and signing off the IM. When I want to interrupt someone else who is
laughing into his/her computer and typing madly as it chirps, I try to
treat it like a telephone call. "Could you please wrap that up so we
can talk about plans for the weekend?"

Louise