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Title: Spending Quality Time Digital
Scrapbooking with Your Teenagers
Author: Wes Waddell
Finding time to spend with your kids it tough, finding quality activities to
keep their interest is even tougher. The older they get, the harder it is to
find things to do that interest you both. By the time they are teenagers... it's
more like the proverbial needle in a haystack.
The good news is that teen girls and even most boys take to digital scrapbooking
like ducks to water. It involves computers and technology, something kids today
are quite comfortable using. Moreover, mom and dad, we didn’t leave you out as
scrapbooking literally means the telling of family stories and preserving them
for generations to come.
This leads to all kinds of talks about life and the lessons you can learn from
one another.
If you have more than one teenager, then this is also a great way to make sure
that they each get their own special time alone with you. Our friends have found
that scrapbook activities are also great for building a quality relationships
with a step-child.
My favorite part was how easy it was to get them started. You don’t need any
real amount of planning or scheduling. For our kids, all it took was to get out
the boxes of old photo’s, the ones taking up half our storage space… then I just
asked one or the other to help me sort a few photo’s by date and activities.
The next thing I knew, they were in charge of scanning them into the computer
and fixing them up or cropping out the excess junk. Soon I had the whole family
working on their own pages. You ask one or two questions about what was going on
in the images and before you know it, your actually communicating with a
teenager.
What a concept!
It’s amazing what you can learn from your kids when they are teaching you a new
technique in photo editing or providing their ideas about scrapbook page design
and layout.
This may have also worked for hand scrapping, but I know for a fact that it was
the computer and technology that peaked my kids interest and gave them the
opportunity to become the teacher instead of just the student. In that respect,
it’s what really opened up the conversation and made the lead in to the
thousands of other subjects we discussed while documenting our families lives.
Scrapbooking requires the telling of stories as an integral part of the process.
It can’t be done without it. The fact that we began using the families computer
as a part of process of digital or computer scrapbooking is what drew our
teenagers into the story telling too.
Scrapbooking my high school years was the perfect story that lead to quite a few
important conversations with our teens. What you’ll really like though is how
comfortable it becomes talking about those subjects in the context of creating a
scrapbook. You are just telling the story of your life, complete with pictures.
Expressing what you learned and how you felt at that time is just a part of the
story. It’s amazing how quickly your teenagers will start applying it to their
lives and sharing what they are going through.
It just happens… no prodding or coaxing required!
So, if you are looking for the best way to get to know your kids and to spend
days, not just hours enjoying their company, then break out the photo’s and boot
up the computer. Your next digital scrapbook could just be the answer to a
teenager’s parent’s prayer.
About the author:
Wes and his wife Kathy are the proud owners of the first digital scrapbook
membership site on the internet:
www.PrincessCrafts.com. It was computer scrapbooking with Kathy’s
beautiful designs and Wes’ knowledge of technology
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