Grab your lunch and join me and fellow parents on May 1 at noon (EDT) for an enjoyable and engaging chat about getting kids to help around the house.

Got some ideas? Need some new ones? Wondering what is age-appropriate and how much you should expect them to do? Share your questions & your thoughts or just sit back and take it all in. It’s on Twitter. Not on Twitter? That’s ok. It’s easy (take it from me, the social media novice). I’ve attached a 3-minute video to give you all you need to know.

Once you’ve set up your quick and easy Twitter account, here’s how we’ll chat. We will:
– Go to twubs.com (this makes it easier to chat)
– Log into Twitter by clicking the box at the bottom (you may have to quickly download the App)
– Type in parentingtweens in the hashtag (#) box at the top

That’s it! You will have joined the chat. Sit back . . . watch . . . and jump in if and whenever you are ready! Simply type in what you want to say in the box and click Send; then wait for the next person to jump in. It’s fun, it’s engaging, it’s insightful!

I can’t emphasize how easy it is. Bring your thoughts, your questions, your ideas and leave with some new ones as we all learn from one another.

I hope you will join us on May 1! (noon, EDT)

p.s. And for those who are more experienced chatters:

– Other chat sites can also be used in the discussion. Tweetchat (www.tweetchat.com) can be used to track/participate in Twitter chats, but you may miss parts of the conversation, and Tweetchat appears to have some time delays.

– If you have an existing HootSuite accont, you can creat a new tab to track Twitter search results. If you are a user of TweetDeck, you can add a new column for the hashtag results and get desktop notifications of the new tweets.

So by now you’ve probably taken a ride (if even a short one) on the social media train. It just keeps runnin’ down that track, fast as lightning, as we try to keep up. Maybe your kids are on Twitter – either following or being followed – and the only “tweets” you know are the ones from the birds in your Spring-filled yard.

Wanna catch on? Wanna know a little bit more about Twitter? It’s really easy. Take it from me, the one who’s taken the slow train to social media. Put your little toe in the Twitter tub, and get it wet – because up and coming are some cool and easy chats about the stuff we parents like to chat about — stuff about chores (as in the kids doing some around the house), sleep, just plain tolerating this teen behavior, and good stuff like that. We’ll get the conversation rolling and take it where it goes. We can learn sooo much from each other. Who’s doing what, when; what works well and who’s figured what out. It really does take a village.

Join our online village on May 1 at noon (EDT). We’re talkin’ chores and how kids are doing them (or not) around the house.

Get your feathers on and get ready to tweet – it’s really easy.

Here’s the elevator speech of what you need to know about Twitter:

– On Twitter, you “tweet.” You tweet something, anything of interest to you, in 140 characters or less.

– You can follow others and they can follow you.

– Everybody has a username or “handle” (yep, just like the old CB days). (Mine is FactsofLifeBook). You choose your handle.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE HASHTAG?

Good question. A Twitter “hashtag” is this: #. It notifies users that the words that follow are keywords (this helps people search specific topics and interests in Twitter). I often use #preteens as a hashtag.

And one more thing, just for now. You can also use Twitter to send a direct message to another Twitter user. Simply type @ in front of his/her handle (like @FactsofLifeBook). Doing that links you to that user and his/her Twitter profile.

Whaddya say? Easy enough? Stay tuned for the next post – to lead you to signing in to Twitter. Don’t go away. Soon we’ll be tweeting away (Twitter chat scheduled for May 1 at noon) about ways our kids can help around the house.

Is your teen getting enough sleep? Unless he or she is one of the 8% of teens who gets between 8 1/2 and 9 1/4 hours of sleep a night, the answer is no.

This topic occupies a bit of my mental energy from time to time. It must occupy that of others too, as I notice the presence of sleep studies as well as local governments continuing to grapple with the idea of later school starts for our teens. It’s only natural. It’s only natural to be concerned with what is becoming a societal epidemic: sleep-deprived teens.

And, it’s only natural that our teens are sleep-deprived. After the onset of puberty, the same kids who naturally became drowsy at 8 or 9 o’clock at night are now awake……until their naturally-produced melatonin sleep hormone is released around 11 pm. Their circadian rhythms change after adolescence. They don’t become drowsy until later in the evening now, after that melatonin releases. Throw in the early bus stop, and you’ve got a sleep-deprived kid. (Not to mention the mix of academia and extra-curricular activities.)

As parents, our middle-age circadian rhythms change too. Our melatonin releases earlier now than in our younger days. Now that makes for a sleepy mom and a wide-awake teen. Not the greatest combination.

There’s much to talk about and much to consider with this sleep-deprived teen topic. What is happening in your house — and within your schools — and with the teens you see at the sleepy bus stop? This is the first of more blogs to come on this topic.

Before signing off, I leave you with this Washington Post article: Sleep Deprivation & Teens: Walking Zombies.  The statistics will certainly wake you up and leave you bushy-tailed.

Until then…..gotta go…..my melatonin’s kicking in . . .