So there we were, on a summer evening, my daughter and I sitting in the backyard by our trickling pond, watching fireflies. A clear sky, some popcorn and, well, the family laptop. I had picked up a few magazines as we headed to the patio for a little relaxing evening time. My daughter picked up her book of choice...the MacBook. ; )

It was a beautiful evening, as I thumbed through a family magazine, pointing out articles on trips to North Dakota, and recipes for a raspberry cobbler we could make the following day. She browsed through pages too - web pages - looking at upcoming movie trailers for flicks we should see this summer. She showed me the Web site she had created recently and we talked about her private profile and checked out the site’s safety recommendations.

When it got dark, my magazine became obsolete in the pitch black of the yard – the print was too faint to see and then the pictures lost their perk. But her book glowed. And we paged through it together.

Sharon Miller Cindrich is an author, columnist and mother of two tech-savvy kids. Her work has appeared in magazines and newspapers across the country including The Chicago Tribune, Parents Magazine and FamilyFun Magazine, where she is a contributing editor. Her self-syndicated column Plugged In Parent is published in parenting magazines around the country, and her book E-parenting: Keeping Up With Your Tech-Savvy Kids (Random House 2007) is available on Amazon.com.

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