“My So-Called Midlife”:

Technology makes parenting easier — except when you can’t see your kid’s choir show over a sea of iPads and smartphones, Karina Bland writes.

Iwas at the last choir concert of the school year in a pretty church rented for the occasion. The students filed in and took their places on the risers, my son in the back row because he’s so tall. He looked dashing in a black tuxedo. I caught his eye and smiled (but didn’t wink or wave or anything else on the List of Embarrassing Things Parents Do in Public).

As the music began, a sea of iPads and smartphones rose up out of the audience, each held firmly, one hand on either side, like an offering. The video cameras were tapped on, each zoomed in on a particular child.

School officials ask parents not to videotape performances like this one. (Of course professional recordings are available for $20.) But sometimes parents, like our kids, don’t listen.

A mom two rows ahead of me held her iPad up to the left and her head to the right, so I couldn’t see around her big hair or the 91⁄ 2- by 7-inch screen.

I slid to the right on the pew and came up behind another tablet. (At least smartphones are easier to see around.)

I slid back to the left and leaned out into the aisle — where a dad had set up his iPad on a tripod. Foiled again.

Usually I choose my seat better — skirting the mom frantically deleting pictures and apps to free up space, avoiding the dad shooting video clips of the people sitting around him and testing-testing-testing the mike.

Well, it was too late now. I sat back, arms crossed, and just listened.

We nag our kids to get off their cellphones, drag them away from video games and complain about how much time they spend in front of a screen. But we parents are us--

ing technology a lot, maybe even more than our kids.

It has probably made parenting easier. Well, except when I’m trying to get eyes on my kid at a choir concert.

When I found out I was pregnant, I signed up for a weekly e-mail that let me track what was going on inside my uterus — the size of the fetus, which week he grew eyes and when his tail disappeared — along with tips about nutrition and exercise.

After my son was born, I tapped the Internet for information about poo colors, sleep patterns and breast-feeding. I didn’t need Mom’s advice. I had Google.

Was he ready for kindergarten? There was a list online. “Can he bounce and catch a ball?” (I pelted Sawyer with a red playground ball for weeks until he could catch it, probably more in self-defense I suspect than actual developmental skill.)

I could buy Sawyer’s firstgrade picture on CD, download it and send it to relatives by e-mail. I searched the Web for healthy lunch ideas, what to do in case of a nosebleed, and how to tell if he really was sick or faking.

Cameras kept getting smaller and cheaper, so I recorded it all — first steps, lost teeth, the first day of school (every year, the last day, too, and most days in between), birthdays, vacations, and even a temper tantrum in Disneyland while he was wearing a Peter Pan costume — during which even he couldn’t keep a straight face.

Want to see a picture of my kid? Hold on ( tapping screen), here’s a slideshow, or this video montage.

Road trips were a breeze with portable DVD players, books on CD, hand-held video games and then tablets. A softvoiced GPS led me effortlessly through Los Angeles travel, diverting around road construction. Siri, where’s the closest bathroom?

I signed Sawyer up for science camp, swim lessons and a library card without ever standing in a real line. I picked where to eat based on the list of Top 10 Best Places to Eat With Kids I found online and printed out coupons for discounts on clothes and admission to the zoo.

I don’t worry about my kid talking to strangers because no one talks anymore; he mostly texts. He won’t get lost because his movements usually are within range of Wi-Fi. I could reach him anytime by cellphone.

There was little I didn’t know — or couldn’t find out.

Sure, honey, I understand rational numbers, I’d say, as I pulled up a math-tutorial website. What do I know about biological adaptations to environmental changes in primitive societies? Ev-er-y-thing. (Why, yes, son, your mom is a genius.)

No homework tonight? Are you sure? He checks his agenda because he knows I’ve been on the teacher’s website. Who’s going to be at this party? I can find out for myself from the invite list on Facebook.

This is better than eyes in the back of my head.

I’m trying to figure out if we lost anything when we gained all this technology. (I mean, besides our manners at choir concerts.)

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the information. Then again, I’ve never felt so connected to my friends and family, particularly the ones on the other side of the world.

I suppose my kid could stand to be bored occasionally. (Maybe he’d actually go outside.) Then again, why, when he can look up how to hypnotize someone or shoot a movie complete with laser battles and explosions?

Maybe there is something to be said for facing the consequences when Sawyer forgets his English essay at home. On the other hand, he can tap into Google documents on his smartphone, e-mail the essay to his teacher and still get an A.

The world has changed; it will keep changing.

Sitting there in the pew, I realized that I had started watching the concert on the iPad screens that were held up in front of me, like when Amy and I went to the Don Henley concert at the old Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion and watched the Jumbotron overhead from the lawn.

I wondered what the audience looked like to the kids on the risers, their parents’ faces obscured by screens, aglow with pride and the LCD light. I suspected they were used to it.

And when the concert ended and the woman two rows in front of me turned around, I caught her eye and nodded at her iPad: “Could you send that to me?”