Personal experience: how to raise a child without depending on the screens and not going crazy
'09.05.2019'
Source: Rusbase
It takes a lot of willpower to ban a child from using gadgets. Blogger Bee Nalini in her column on Medium gave some tips that helped her herself.
Let's first clarify what it means to grow "without dependence on screens." Most days my child does not use any gadgets, writes Rusbase. If this happens, we limit the usage time to 20 minutes. We do not believe that it is possible to completely and completely ban technologies, and therefore we allow our son to do homework for our laptops. We also calmly show him a video about the world that surrounds him, but one by one per day.
Here are the strategies that helped us:
Children will do what you do, not how you tell them. We never watched TV in the presence of our son. Now we don’t even have a TV at home, and we don’t miss it. We also do not have a tablet. We sometimes watch TV shows with a volley on Netflix, but after the son goes to bed.
Ask for help. If you are tired or you need to do something, ask for help to the person, not the device. Grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, babysitters - rely on them.
Early efforts will pay off later. For the first two years, we absolutely did not allow our son to use gadgets. To compensate for their absence, I invented simple songs with movements and entertained him with them. We also listened to music and danced a lot. They also ran around the house, read books, played toys.
Gradually loosen the ban.. In two years we made certain exceptions. The video for the child should have been chosen by an adult, and the time spent in front of the screen should not exceed twenty minutes a day.
On the subject: What are sick children who play a lot on the tablets
Give the child a choice, but control it. At three years we created a rule “one video per day”, but with some conditions: the son must ask for something to be included, he can choose the topic, but we choose the video. On some days, he doesn’t even ask to watch a video.
When you can't change anything, don't try. In some places we can not control the child. In restaurants, for example, he enjoys watching games or cartoons. This created patterns in his head that he could look at, on which device and where. For example, now he does not understand that he can watch videos on our laptops; we only show them on phones. Of course, this will change over time, but so far everything is great!
Gadgets are fun, not distraction. We follow a strict lack of gadgets for food.
Never say never". All the above rules were once broken.
It's really hard
It all seems reasonable and doable, why are parents so hard? Because you have to pay for it. Constant attempts to occupy something child exhausting. And we still have to do simple chores around the house — cook, dress, clean. There is no energy left at the end of the day.
You suffer, relationships suffer, lists with goals suffer, social life suffers.
For example, in our case, a person who is sitting with our son cannot do anything else. He cannot talk to someone, check emails in parallel or read.
On the subject: What will your children remember when they grow up
Another problem was that the son quickly got tired in a chaotic / loud environment. Social events or long flights were not easy for us.
It was difficult, but quite doable. Today, in fact, I'm more worried about our dependence on screens than about it. Of course, everything will change when he grows up, but for the time being in our house there is always talk and laughter. We learn, play and have fun together.
Resources for parents in English
Addiction is a strong word. Most of the children I know are not dependent on technology, given the true meaning of this term. But many children really need gadgets to calmly go through routine exercises. Almost all parents will agree that this is imperfect and can lead to addiction if it is not stopped in a timely manner.
If you are still not sure whether gadgets harm children or if your child depends on technology, these resources can help you:
How to find out if your child has a technology addiction (a blog about child psychology)
This is not a dependency, but it can become (an excerpt from the Truth about Tech conference)
How much time should modern children spend behind the screens (research)
American Pediatric Association recommendations on media use
A selection of books / studies on this topic (from psychologists to the blog Safe Tech)
Comparison with real types of addiction (breaking myths about technology dependence)
