Social Parenting: From Cradle To College
modify remove organize post follow upI have recently been bumping into all sorts of new parenting tools, and not because I am a parent myself. My sons, Keenan and Conrad, are pretty far along: Keenan is in college in Chicago, and Conrad is in his senior year of high school. While I have indulged in a moderate among of parental frenzy over the years — six years of soccer coaching, karate lessons, innumerable photographs — my kids early days were really before the Web 2.0 revolution had started. So when I look over various offerings around today, it is as a knowledgeable outsider, rather than as a young parent wondering what to name little Junior who is on the way.
What A Lovely Name
I bumped into What A Lovely Name only today, which turns out not to be very social, but worthy of a quick mention, because naming babies is one of the first things we all have to grapple with in parenting.
Keenan | What a Lovely Name, The perfect name for your baby., originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
I discovered that my older son Keenan is not bearing a name of Irish tradition (which it is), but is firmly in the African-American side of things. Hmmm. He’s not going to be mistaken for a brother, and considering we were thinking of Keenan Wynn, it’s funny. Perhaps if he switched to the more Irish spelling of Cianán?
The only thing that WALN does aside from a tag-based narrowing down on names — choosing ‘wise’, ‘leader’, ‘strong’, ‘intelligent’ led to 1 name, Guaresh, for example? — is a connection to Zazzle to allow parents to buy stuff with Junior’s name on it. Thud.
I was hoping for a way to share the naming ideas with friends, to socialize it.
Lil Grams
L’il Grams, developed by my close friend Greg Narain, starts up immediately after the baby is born, or close to it. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to mull over Junior’s name with friends. You in fact use the baby’s name as the subdomain in the site. But, everything after that is captured in a Tumblr blog fashion, the baby’s firsts, measurements, photos, videos, different foods, and stories from the child’s early days.
Lil’Grams, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
You can see that this product is designed for young parents sharing baby’s earliest days with friends and family. The various post types make it easier to keep up with baby’s doings. Here’s a First post:
Lil’Grams: Your Baby’s Memories In Real Time, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
And you can sense the easy migration into a subsequent product, for kids heading for toddler stage, or school years, with post types for classes, athletics, theater, friends, pets. Greg is on to something here.
Glubble
