Parenting in the Digital Age: Balancing Screens and Sanity

image

Nowadays I do have this weird feeling that raising a child in today's world is somehow hard especially with different development popping up every time and somehow, nowadays babies are kind of smarter than their age especially when it comes to operating gadgets, you will be shocked at how quickly they catch on with things, now as a parent, I don't know if I should be happy when it comes to technology (devices) or be sad, not that technology didn't come in handy because we have access to a lot of things by just clicking few buttons but the concerns that come with it, at times when I see children with phones, I just can't imagine how easily these devices do take away their time, attention among other things, I can't forget when a woman almost beat her two children because they were on their phone for hours watching cartoon on youtube and didn't answer when she called them.

When it comes to helping your kids live a healthy digital life, you as the parent need to make some sacrifices which might not look easy at first, just like they say "Charity begins at home" when it come to a person behavior or character, it is the same thing here, we as parents are our children first teacher and they do emulate whatever we do, they watch and learn from us, imagine telling your kid to put away his device and go to bed and you receive a shocking reply "you are always on your phone too", how will you feel at that moment? You have to lead by example first so they can follow what you do. Major mistake parent often make is that, they don't set boundaries for their children when they don't want their children to use certain devices, instead they ban them from using it without knowing they are making a bad decision, If I'm a kid and you ban me from using a device, I will rather use it when I know you won't be there, even when some site restrict us, we switch to vpn just to have access. Banning your children won't stop them but bring out their sneaking behavior, the best way is to set rules for them while still giving them access and to even make it more interesting, give them tasks to complete and if they succeed, reward them with some hours on their device.

image

I think the most important part is to always discuss with your children about what they see online, the internet is full of things both positive and negative and no matter how you try to restrict what they see online, you can't restrict everything, so as a parent, having discussion about digital worlds will make them understand some certain things and also get you closer to them and at some point, they feel comfortable to tell you things especially when they are curious about something. In doing this, you are helping them develop their digital literacy and things online won't be strange to them since they are now aware of stuff they might find online.