Time to address the elephant in the room; Technology. When is it applicable to hand over to your child and when should you misdirect with the toy truck?
A good half of parenting is observation, both in watching the child and what other parents are doing. Observation being something that I have always been good at. Then picking apart someone’s actions from a sociological standpoint has always been something that interests me. So, I tend to see the why of how someone reacts a lot quicker than most. I think this is where my initial judge of character comes from.
One of the biggest trends in parenting that I’ve seen today is when in a restaurant handing off the smartphone to keep the child entertained / quiet. I’ve seen this happen with children ranging in ages from 2-well into their teens. Admittedly the latter half of that tend to have their own smartphone. While I can relate that it is a very easy way out, I’ve got to wonder if it’s more harm than help.
I’ll set the stage for you. Two parents and their child walk in to a restaurant. They get seated and the kid is fidgety and inconsolable, one parent frantically pulls out their phone, unlocks it, opens an app and hands it over. This is a desperate attempt to keep the kid quiet, it’s got an added side effect of the parents can now speak to each other unhindered by the interests of their child.
How did we get here? When did the smartphone become the replacement for the pacifier? Well, it’s not a new trend. Parents used to be able to turn on the television and plop their children in front of it for time to themselves. There is an unfortunate downside; the parents have caved once on this, they will cave again and again.
Throughout a child’s developmental life, they begin everything with mimicry. You never really appreciate just how much of this happens until you see it happen. Hearing my son trying to repeat something I said while not consciously censoring my language was an eye-opener. That’s not to say mimicry is only going to show you what you need to do differently, I also remember my son sitting in a high-chair with a spoon tapping the surface of his tray and then bringing the end of the spoon to his face. My wife and I thought the behavior was odd until we pieced together that he was mimicking us eating. But I’ve gotten off topic.
When you realize the parroting is happening you really need to be more conscious of what you do in front of your child. How often do you check your phone? How often is it out in the open? This is where you really need to lay the groundwork for what is acceptable, and bear in mind that if you want your child to follow the rules, you must adhere to them as well. Otherwise, you will be fighting an uphill battle against a fundamental learning method; mimicry.
The other side of this is what else will your child mimic? Take our family in the restaurant from earlier; did they just open YouTube, or some other video service? Do you think the child is going to mimic what they see there? They absolutely will. Maybe not with as much conviction as they parrot their parents, but it will happen. Additionally, I must ask, does the child understand at this point what is morally and socially acceptable for them and what isn’t? Does the child comprehend just how powerful the device is that they hold in their hands?
This post is going to be at least a two-parter, on one hand to keep the length of the posts consistent, and to try and maintain a consistent train of thought.