I was planning to write today about internet security and keeping children safe online after my recent visit to the team at Norton, but a more pressing issue has arisen as a result of my trip which involves blogging and me and one eight-year-old girl.
So I will be writing about internet safety, once I’ve digested the information I received and implemented a few parental controls, but the lasting impact of my trip to London came from meeting Katie Ledger, a former ITN news journalist and mother of two who now manages a successful portfolio career.
So impressed was I with Katie’s talk about reputation management and work/life balance that I stopped off at Waterstones on the way home and bought the book she co-authors with Barrie Hopson And what do you do?
The discussion yesterday turned to how we would envisage our perfect working week, and how that compares to the reality of our lives now. The one area I felt I needed more time was playing with IJ. We simply don’t do enough together in the week.
It occurred to me that in reality I do have enough hours in the day to play games with her after school, to take a trip to the park and to mess about in the garden. We don’t always do that because I’m often too busy faffing about on the internet, replying to emails and repeatedly checking my phone.
So I’ve laid down some new blogging rules that apply to phone usage too. The internet and my phone will be switched off after school each day until early evening. This week’s child wellbeing report from UNICEF says, amongst other things, that parents in the UK struggle to find time to be with their children.
I do have that time but I’m not managing it well. With one eye on the computer and another on my child, there are times when I am not fully there for her. She is happy; she has a stable upbringing despite the fact that it is just me. She is overwhelmed with affection, she wants for very little, but there are times when, I admit, she could see more of me.
So this is changing. Today. She’ll be a teenager before I know it and off out with her friends. She won’t need me in her life quite so much, but she does need me now. So I need to be there.