MOMS TALK: Are You Addicted to Your Blackberry?

Moms Talk is a new feature on Patch that is part of an initiative on our sites to reach out to moms and families.

Patch invites you and your circle of friends to help build a community of support for mothers and their families right here in Monmouth County.

Each week in Moms Talk, we pose an issue and look to our of experts and all the other smart moms to give advice and share solutions.

Moms Talk will also be the place to drop in for a talk about the latest parenting hot topic. Do you know of a local mom who’s adopted the Tiger Mother approach to parenting and what do you think? Where can we get information on local flu shot clinics for children? Should we worry about our kids spending so much time online? How can we help our children’s schools weather their budget cutbacks?

So grab a cup of coffee and settle in as we start the conversation today and create our own community of moms helping each other out.

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While much has been made of the amount of time our teens spend in front of a screen—a new study by the Kaiser Foundation found they rack up on average seven hours a day, not including texting—moms are sometimes no better.

Technology can be distracting. Look around any restaurant, hair salon, doctor’s waiting room or sporting event and you’ll see a lot of women looking down into their laps and tapping away on their phones. They’re texting, reading, scrolling, searching—their minds far from their physical location.

It makes me crazy when my kids do it. I took my son to see Stephen Colbert at last year and in the middle of the cable star’s hilarious riff on the political climate, my teenager kept pulling out his phone and casting a light on rows of fellow audience members all around us while he texted. I don’t know what was more distracting: his rudeness or my vehement hissing for him to put the phone away.

But I’m just as guilty of becoming distracted by my gadgets and not knowing when to unplug. Recently, a conference call for work conflicted with picking a child up from an appointment in Red Bank. I dialed in and set the phone to speaker and the call began as my daughter got into the car. I was quite pleased with my ability to take my work-life multitasking to another level, and then looked over and finally took notice of my child and asked her how she was.

She lost it.

She began to cry about something that had been bothering her and as I pulled over to console her, I struggled with whether I should end the call, or just turn it down a little. I chose the latter, initially, until it became clear that I truly needed to unplug and engage in my child’s sadness.

I thought of that incident when I read in the business section of The New York Times this Sunday “Who’s the Boss, You or Your Gadget?” The article talked about the distractions created by all of our gizmos—smart phones, laptops, iPads, e-mail, texting, Facebook, Twitter—and how it’s creating a struggle for some of us to truly engage in our families and the world around us.

My friend Susan told me a funny story the other day about how she had a hard time staying focused watching the new movie Social Network (about the founding of Facebook) because she was on Facebook the whole time.

And I don’t think it’s just a phenomenon for moms who go to work and can’t unplug. I think we all have so many balls in the air with kids—school, PTA, sports, lessons, scouts. We’re volunteering and driving and need to be here, there and everywhere and need to keep checking, checking, checking to make sure we’re where we’re supposed to be and with the right child. We also have our personal lives to keep up via e-mail and Facebook with friends and family. The online communicating could be a full time job if you let it.

So tell us, what was the one time that you definitely should NOT have been connected--to your Blackberry, laptop, Facebook, email--but you just couldn't help yourself? Post your comments in the box directly below this article.