Long-distance grandparents

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a free trial to Ancestry.com and have been intensively investigating the history of my mother’s family — the Tragheims (or Traghams — some of them changed their name during the second world war). I wanted to squeeze every last bit of data out of my trial period, before the $19.95 per month charge kicked in, and so I’ve not had much time for blogging. But I’m back! (And I’ll say more about the outcomes of my researches later).

Anyway, I was struck by an article in the NYT about how grandparents keep in touch with young children over long distances using webcams. The article had a lot of resonances for me because Maia has been keeping in touch with her grandparents that way since she was perhaps six months old. It was hard to get my dad (who’s in his mid-70s and not computer-literate) set up with a webcam and with Skype, but it was worth the effort. When my parents came over to see Maia when she was 11 months old she already knew them. We still talk at least once a week, and Maia (who’s now two) indulges in many of the behaviors described, such as “feeding” cheerios to her nana and “daida” (her word for my dad), singing songs with them, etc.

It’s not always easy having these conversations, because any adult element tends to get squeezed out. Once Maia senses that the conversation has swung away from things she can understand, she gets restless and starts making a lot of noise.

But one comment that particularly struck me was this observation:

…no one quite knows what it means to a generation of 2-year-olds to have slightly pixelated versions of their grandparents as regular fixtures in their lives.

I can’t imagine it’s going to do anything but good for children to be in touch with their parents in this way. Maybe I’m lacking in imagination. But here’s what I am wondering about. Part of the information revolution is that compared to my youth photographs are far more abundant and easily viewable and video is also more accessible. By the time I was Maia’s age the number of photographs of me probably numbered a couple of dozen. I must have a couple of thousand pictures of Maia. And she regularly looks at these photographs on my iPod and on my computer (and my wife’s computer). In fact it’s often part of our bedtime ritual that she sits with me for “special time with daddy” and we watch a slide-show with accompanying mellow music. Sometimes (but not at bedtime) she watched videos of herself, from when she was a tiny baby to something that happened just the other day.

What’s the effect of all that?

I guess it remains to be seen whether Maia becomes excessively self-preoccupied as a result of watching so many images of herself. That’s one possibility. But she’s very interested indeed at looking at pictures of herself with other people, or simply at pictures of other people. She’ll sometimes request — over and over again — to see pictures of someone she’s only met once or twice. She seems to maintain her sense of connectedness with others, which would tend to undermine any possible self-centredness. So the jury’s out on that one.

The thing I really wonder about is what this all does to her memory. I’ve noticed that she seems to have excellent episodic memory. We can ask her if she remembers something that happened weeks or months ago and she’ll often contribute her recollections. For example when she was 21 months old we hiked up a mountain with her. If we ask her about that she’ll start naming the other participants in the hike. I think that seeing photographs is strengthening her memory.

But I also wonder if seeing all these pictures will in some way replace her memories, with her recollections becoming memories of the photographs and videos she’s seen, rather than direct memories of the events themselves. Having said that, the phrase “direct memories” is often a misnomer. It’s been shown that when we recall something repeatedly we run the risk of adding to or otherwise distorting our recollections. I’ve heard it put that each time we remember something it’s like we use “save as…” rather than “save.” This suggests that to a large extent our memories of the past are actually memories of memories of memories (etc) of events. I have memories of when I was two years old, but all of these memories have been repeatedly “opened” and “saved as” and so all of them are suspect. As witness of the commonness of this phenomenon, call to mind an early memory. Then notice if you can see yourself in the memory. If you can, this is a clear indication that the memory is a recreation and an interpretation rather than a video-like recording.

Given that the “save as…” aspect of memory already exists, I’m left only with the question of whether this heavy exposure to photographs and video will help preserve memories in Maia’s mind (bearing in mind that memories are regenerated and malleable rather than fixed). I rather think it will, although that’s a guess based on a rather small sample size.

In the article, another concern is raised:

Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worries that ever-more-real virtual encounters (holograms may be next) could make us forget what we are missing in the case of a grandchild: the smell of a grandmother’s cooking, the warmth of an embrace. In interviews, older grandchildren who video chat with grandparents say they visit them less, feeling that they have already “seen” them.

It seems likely that some children will become blasé about actually meeting their grandparents, having seen them so much. But given that Maia’s grandparents live on the other side of the Atlantic and neither we nor they can afford to make the crossing frequently, I can’t see this being a problem in out case.

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