ML Interest Tag: communicate

The 5 Biggest Myths about Teens & Phones, Debunked

By Cindy Price

Like most parents I know, I finally gave in to my teens’ requests for smartphones a few years ago. Then I regretted it almost immediately as they started spending an inordinate amount of time glued to their screens.

Later on, I found out that they’d joined different types of social media and my anxiety went up a notch. I worried about the effect social media would have on their lives, I agonized on whether I should limit their screen time and became anxious about cyberbullying.

I did my research, talked to other parents and even consulted their school counselor. Finally, I thought I had teens and phones all figured out.

How wrong I was.

Through watching and talking to my teens, I discovered that I wasn’t as “in the know” as I thought I was. My kids helped me debunk the below common myths about teens and their phones.

1. Teens are addicted to technology.

It’s no secret that smartphones have become ubiquitous in teens’ lives. Even teens themselves think they spend too much time on these devices. However, as my daughter told me, teens are not addicted to tech but to their friends. Phones only provide an easy and convenient way to stay in touch with their peers, allowing them to connect, share, receive support and other forms of emotional validation that most teens crave.

2. Technology is just fun and games.

I used to think that devices were a huge waste of time until I was clued in by my son. He showed me how his phone helps him do research for schoolwork and how he uses some apps to express himself through writing. That’s when I realized that when used safely and correctly, apps and tech can enhance learning.

3. Teens use confusing acronyms to hide their mischief from parents.

I once came across an article warning parents about all the confusing acronyms teens use, some of which were shorthand for sex, drugs or alcohol. After that, I resolved to be hyper-vigilant until one of my daughters pointed out that while teens do use acronyms, it was all in good fun between friends and rarely was there any ill-intent behind it.

4. Cyberbullying is the biggest digital challenge teens face.

Cyberbullying is a serious issue among teens. Unfortunately, I was so focused on it that I forgot to pay attention to other issues my teens needed help with. These included things like pressure to share nudes, sexting, how to handle communicating with a crush, how to deal with being bombarded with hundreds of texts from your best friend or boyfriend, etc.

5. Teens use anonymous apps to share inappropriate “secrets” with others.

Finding out that there were apps out there that allowed teens to anonymously share secrets seemed like a recipe for disaster. I thought these apps would help promote bullying and would be filled with unsuitable content.

Raising these concerns with my son led to a lively discussion where I found out that anonymous apps like Whisper were indeed a thing. However, as it so often happens, lots of people flooded these apps and made them weird, so they eventually went out of st‌yle.

After talking about the dangers lurking online, I eventually decided to trust my teens. Instead of always suspecting the worst, I learned to question what they were using their phones for and maintained an ongoing dialogue about the benefits and hazards of technology.

Cindy Price would like to say she's a parenting expert but she knows better than to do that. As a parent educator and writer for over 15 years, she's well-aware how quickly parenting practices evolve. Family is her greatest joy and she hopes her writing can help make families stronger. 

Advertisement

Related reads

Advertisement

Find a Work-from-Home Job with These 6 Smart Tips

By FlexJobs

Photo: Photo via Bigstockphoto.com

Even on the best of days, being a working parent is tough—especially if you’re the captain of your family, which is my way of saying you’re the go-to, primary caregiver. Doesn’t “captain” sound better? One way to remove some of the peripheral junk that makes being a working mom feel so hectic is to work from home.

There’s a constant juggle between work priorities, home priorities and all the obstacles in between. What to wear to work? How will the commute be this morning? When was the last time I exercised? Did I catch a cold from Coughing Susan in the next cubicle? And those are just the concerns we have about our days. Our brains are also flooded with thoughts about our kids, spouses and partners, parents, neighbors, friends. It’s a lot.

Luckily, working from home is more of a possibility than ever before. Between 2005 and 2015, regular remote work in the U.S. grew 115 percent. And as of 2017, 43 percent of U.S. workers now work remotely at least occasionally, up from only 9 percent in 2007.

If you’re wondering whether you could work remotely, the answer is absolutely yes. The stereotype of a fresh college grad working from his parent’s basement for a start-up company couldn’t be further from the truth. The average remote worker is 46 years or older, has at least a bachelor’s degree, earns a higher median salary than an in-office worker and works for a company with more than 100 employees. And slightly more women (52 percent) than men (48 percent) work from home.

As a working mom, a career coach for remote job seekers and a remote worker myself, I want to help you work this way! Landing a remote job involves many elements of a traditional job search, but with a few key things to know as you search for jobs.

Let’s get you started searching for your own work-from-home job with these six smart steps.

1. Use the right keywords when you’re searching online.

Don’t use work-from-home or work-at-home when you’re searching job listings online (reading articles like this, about working from home, is okay). Scammers use those phrases to attract unsuspecting job seekers into employment scams. Instead, stick with keywords like telecommute job, remote job and virtual job because legitimate companies tend to use those most often.

2. Research remote-friendly companies.

Some companies are much better at hiring and utilizing remote workers than others. Check out FlexJobs’ annual list of the 100 Top Companies for Remote Jobs which features the companies that hire the most remote workers each year. And Remote.co features interviews with over 100 mostly or fully remote companies, including their most common job interview questions!

3. Play up your previous remote experience.

Have you ever worked from home? Even occasionally or casually? Maybe your kids were home sick from school. Or you were waiting for the cable to be installed. Or the weather was terrible so you skipped the commute. Maybe you worked from home at a regular interval. Or perhaps you completed volunteer projects, classes or certifications from home. All of this counts as remote work experience–and that’s exactly what remote-friendly employers want to see.

Update your resume and cover letters with any previous remote work experience you have, even occasional. Use phrases like “experience working remotely” or “five years of regular remote work” to tell employers you’ve got what it takes.

4. Play up the skills you have that would make you a good remote worker.

Even if you don’t have previous remote experience, you likely have many of the skills it takes to be an effective remote worker. Being able to focus and work independently, comfort with technology and troubleshooting, time and task management and communicating through email, phone, IM or chat are all important. These skills should be listed on your resume, mentioned in your LinkedIn profile and discussed during your job interviews.

5. Put a Technology Skills section on your resume.

Companies that hire remote workers also want to know that you’re quick with technology, but many of the job seekers I coach don’t have any mention of this on their resumes!

Include a list of remote-specific tech you’re familiar with, such as IM programs (Slack, Google Chat), file sharing (Dropbox), document collaboration (Google Drive), video conferencing (join.me, GoToMeeting, Skype) and other remote collaboration tools. A note about your ability to learn new programs quickly is a nice touch.

6. Use your network.

Whether you’re searching on job boards, LinkedIn or pitching clients so you can work remotely as a freelancer, it’s vital to involve the people you know in your search. One of the simplest ways to do this is to check LinkedIn before you apply to each job.

See who you might know at the company (strong ties) or who your connections know at the company (weak ties). Leverage those strong and weak ties to help get your application referred to a human being with hiring power within the company.

Remember these tips as you start your search for a remote job and you’ll soon be dropping your commute and professional wardrobe to work from home in your fuzziest slippers

FlexJobs was created in 2007 to provide a trusted, more effective, friendly, and overall better way to find professional remote and flexible jobs.  We were founded by job space pioneer Sara Sutton after she had been looking for a flexible job after starting her family. She realized that millions of others were just as frustrated by the ads, scams, and inefficiencies on other job boards that wasted her time in finding a good flexible job, and so she decided to create the solution she was looking for.

It wasn’t our original intention, but somehow FlexJobs has become a leader in the flexible job movement that's currently disrupting the traditional workforce. Today, FlexJobs is the leading job search site specializing in the best remote, part-time, freelance, and flexible jobs available. 

Advertisement

Related reads

Advertisement

Why is Baby Crying? Translate With an App

by Suzanna Logan

Have you ever desperately wished your baby could tell you why he’s crying? It’s your newbie’s main method of communicating wants and needs, but too often, the reasons behind those wails get lost in translation, especially when you’re deep in the trenches of sleep deprivation. Now, when Baby is testing out his windpipes (and your sanity), you can resist the urge to join him or her and reach for your iPhone instead and try the Cry Translator app. Read on to see how (and if) it works.

Photo: Morgan via Flickr

How Does This App Translate Cries?

The Cry Translator app claims to have cracked the crying code once and for all. Over a two year period, researchers recorded the cries of 100 newborn babies and stored those 200,000 sounds in an online database. When the app is activated, it matches your baby’s cries against all of those in the collection to let you know the most likely reason for the cry. According to the makers, the app is based on fairly straightforward science: a baby’s cry is a nuanced sound, varying in pitch, inflection and tone, but every infant’s voice tends to share those same subtleties when crying.

How Can You Use It?

Here’s how it works: When Baby is actively crying, open the app and place your device about one foot away from baby. Depending on the intensity of the cry, bars will move from yellow to green to red as your baby’s cry is matched with other similar sounds in the database. In about ten seconds (the wait is harder than you’d think!) the app will offer one of five reasons for the cry. Baby is either sleepy, hungry, bored, stressed or in discomfort.

A Few Tricks

There can’t be any background noise while the app is trying to decipher your baby’s whine. This can make it difficult to use if you have other children in the house or if you are in a public place where there is unavoidable noise. Another scenario that skews the results: having a baby who is prone to intermittent cries rather than all-out fire engine sobs. According to the app, the weeping must be “repetitive and continuous for at least 10 seconds.” If it isn’t, the app tends to return the “Bored” result over and over even if baby is hungry or tired.

Beyond Translating Cries

But the app doesn’t just stop at telling you why baby is crying. Thankfully, it also tells you what to do about it. Once the reading is given, users can click on a list of suggestions for how to calm baby’s tears. For example, if the baby is tired, the app lists eight tips for getting baby to sleep, including “giving the baby a warm bath” and “rocking child in a rocking chair or infant swing.” The app also includes YouTube links to lullabies and baby massage videos. While many of the tips are simple, they are a useful visual reminder to even veteran parents.

Age Matters

And, it should be noted, too, that the app doesn’t claim 100 percent accuracy. For infants under the age of two weeks, researchers believe parents can expect accuracy around 92 percent. For newborns from one to two months of age, the accuracy drops to 85 percent and down to 77 percent for a four month old baby. (The app is not recommended for babies over 6 months of age.)

Who Needs this App?

While seasoned parents may not find themselves reaching for the app on the regular, we can imagine it could be a lifesaving tool for the new parent learning the ropes in those initial crazy, sleep-deprived months or for a caregiver who spends limited time with baby.

The Cry Translator is available on itunes.com, $4.99.

Have you tried any apps to help soothe your crying baby? Tell us about them in the comments below. 

–Suzanna Palmer

Advertisement

Related reads

Advertisement

Red Tricycle Is Hiring Local Sales Reps!

by Sara Olsher

Red Tricycle is looking for Local Sales Reps to manage and grow local advertising for our collection of newsletters and local and national sites. Our Sales Reps are responsible for generating sales revenue from local businesses for Red Tricycle by identifying prospects, developing strategic plans, preparing presentations and proposals, negotiating rates and schedules, and communicating results and/or challenges to management.

What We Offer:
Red Tricycle is a vibrant and fast-growing start-up focused on offering clarity and solutions for moms, who are the primary decision makers for over $5 trillion a year in consumer spending. Red Tricycle is already the #1 resource for families planning their weekend.

We offer a highly attractive commission package on an entrepreneurial team that continues to outpace the competition year after year. Positions are remote, so you can avoid the commute!

What You Offer:
The ideal candidate will have the following qualities:

  • Very strong and extensive relationships in the travel industry with media buyers and key decision makers
  • The ability to work independently to craft creative and efficient solutions to marketers’ requests for proposals
  • Superior communication skills
  • A track record of meeting and exceeding sales goals in the travel category; at least 3 – 5 years of sales experience
  • The ability to thrive in an entrepreneurial environment

Job Responsibilities:

  • Selling and executing local marketing solutions that leverage Red Tricycle’s digital products
  • Cultivating, developing and maintaining relationships with advertising decision makers at the client and agency level
  • Meeting and exceeding weekly goals for outbound activity
  • Customizing various sales aids, visual presentations, research reports and sales support data to close deals

If interested, please send cover letter and resume to admin@tinybeans.go-vip.net.

Advertisement

Related reads

Advertisement

Speaking Swine: A Pig Latin Primer

by Erin Feher

There’s something undeniably cool about communicating via secret code. And the long-beloved language of kiddie spies, sleuths and language lovers is Pig Latin. The nonsense-sounding words are actually simple to speak and understand once you know the basics. So practice with this Pig Latin primer and you may just be able to boast that your kiddo is “bilingual” on their kindergarten application!

Words that Start With Consonants

For words that begin with a consonant (like hello) or a consonant cluster (like friend), simply move the consonant or consonant cluster from the start of the word to the end of the word. Then add the suffix “-ay” to the end of the word.

For example: The word “hello” would become ello-hay, the word “lunch” would become unch-lay and the term “Pig Latin” would become ig-pay Atin-lay.

Words beginning with consonant clusters would change like this:”Friend” would become iend-fray, the word “brother” would become other-bray and “smart” would become art-smay.

Words that Start With Vowels

For words that begin with vowels, all you need to do is add “-yay” (some Pig-Latin speakers may add “-way”) to the end of the word. It’s a little bit of a brain break, as you don’t need to change any letters around, just say the word as normal then add “-yay” to the end.

For example: The word “it” becomes it-yay, the word “olive” becomes olive-yay and the word “under” becomes under-yay.

This also holds true for the personal pronoun “I”, which becomes i-yay.

Extra Tips: 

Compound Words
Longer words that contain two distinct words are usually broken up into two parts, then the speaker follows the rules above for each of those words. It makes them harder to understand for those not fluent in Pig Latin (and isn’t that the whole point?)

For example: The word “bedroom” becomes ed-bay oom-ray and understand becomes “under-ay and-staay.”

That Tricky Letter Y
For words that contain the letter Y, you will have to ask the age-old question: Is that Y behaving like a vowel or a consonant? If it is the first letter in the word, chances are its in consonant mode and you should then follow the “Words that Start with a Consonant” rule above.

For example: The word “Yellow” becomes ellow-yay and “young” become oung-yay.

If Y is the last letter in a two or three letter word, such as “my” or “cry” the normal rules apply.

For example: “My” would become y-may. “Cry” would become “y-cray”

However, if the letter “Y” comes at the end of a consonant cluster, like in the word “rhythm”, it is treated like a vowel and does not move to the end of the word. For example, “rhythm” becomes ythm-rhay.

Got it? Good!

Now it’s time to practice. Here are ten common phrases that you can use to get your brain and tongue working like a native Pig Latin speaker. Ood-gay uck-lay!

What’s up?  At’s-whay up-way?

How are you? Ow-hay are-way ou-yay?

What are you doing later? At-whay are-way ou-yay oing-day ater-lay?

I love you. I-way ove-lay ou-yay.

I have a secret  I-way ave-hay a-way ecret-say.

I want a cookie too. I-yay ant-way a-yay ookie-cay oo-tay.

I like bananas. Bananas are good. I-yay ike-lay anana-bays. Anana-bays are-yay ood-gay.

Can you speak Pig Latin? It’s really not that hard. You should try it. An-cay ou-yay eak-spay Ig-pay Atin-lay? It’s-way eally-ray ot-nay at-thay ard-hay. Ou-yay ould-shay y-tray it-way.

Can you speak Pig Latin? Then leave your comment below in it! 

–Erin Feher

photo: Jolie Loeb

Advertisement

Related reads

Advertisement

We’re Hiring an Editorial Assistant

by Erin Lem

Red Tricycle is currently seeking an outstanding, engaging and enthusiastic editorial assistant to join our team in Sausalito, California. The editorial assistant will report directly to the Editorial Director and Managing Editor. The ideal candidate will have excellent communication skills (both written and verbal), be highly organized, totally in-tune with the digital media parenting space (what’s new, what’s cool, what’s so last year) and possess a keen desire to excel with and learn from a small team of hard-working, fun people who love what they do. This is a full-time, in-office position (sorry, no work from home).

Responsibilities:
— Under the Editorial Director and Managing Editor’s supervision, EA will proofread and copyedit local and national stories for consistency, readability, and brand style.

— Identify emerging trends and content opportunities. Pitch story ideas on a weekly basis.

— Proofread marketing & promo social media shout outs.

— Write content for the National, Bump + Baby, and Food editions.

— Write business profiles on behalf of our advertising team.

— Assist in all things editorial related, whether this means communicating with the City Editors and freelance writers, updating content, or perusing blogs to discover the coolest (and easiest) way to throw a Pirate-themed birthday party. The sky’s the limit.

Qualifications:
B.A. in English or Journalism
Familiarity with Red Tricycle editorial brand with ability to adopt writing to express RT style
Can easily whip up quality copy in no time flat aka you need to be impervious to writer’s block
Ability to edit copy & fact check in an online environment under deadline
Experience working at an online publication in an editorial capacity
Familiarity with parenting and digital media trends
Knowledge of WordPress

Email your resume, cover letter, and writing sample to Editor AT tinybeans.go-vip.net for consideration.

Advertisement

Related reads

Advertisement