Kids spend more time in front of screens than doing almost anything else.
Research tells us that very young kids’ screen time increases the incidence of ADHD. Common sense says life is not meant to be lived onscreen.
Our world is rich with pity parties of parents bemoaning how much time their kids spend texting, on Facebook, playing computer games and not relating. So quit whining and do something about it. Or look in the mirror and say something honest to yourself, like: “My kid(s) spend more hours in front of a screen than they do relating to their peers or doing actual activities, and I’ve accepted that’s how it’s going to be.”
If you prefer choice # 1, start by looking in that mirror again. You can talk to kids all day about how they should live their lives, but a) they won’t listen, and b) they’ll live the way you do, regardless of what you say to them.
Do you look at emails or surf the net during family time? Answer your cell when the kids are around? Watch lots of TV? Monkey see, monkey do. As we say to counselors at camp: “They know what we show.”
Do you have boundaries around your own screen time? If you’re onscreen 24/7, it’s time to get real and know that’s what you show. Perhaps your kids have mentioned that. How would you survive if you restricted yourself screen-wise, if you created personal boundaries about when you check email, when you answer your cell, when you surf the net, when you watch TV?
It would be like going on a diet: You set up a situation of deprivation in order to get something you want. Same deal with screen reduction: You give up a habit in order to get something you want, which is being a better role model for your kids. Are your kids important enough to do that?
Having adjusted your own habits, step two is checking out what we offer our kids instead of screen time?
Do an inventory for a week. Add up the uninterrupted time your family spent together. Change it if need be. Do stuff together. By together, I don’t mean driving the kids to a program. I mean doing something together.
Remember family dinner? The centre of my household is the kitchen and dining area.
Because we’re “foodies,” we do a lot of cooking together with our kids, and family dinner follows naturally. But the cooking doesn’t matter — it’s just a way to spend time together. A family could sit down to something ordered in or defrosted and still experience connection and communication. The dinner table is the hub of a household because it’s where a family connects with each other — screen-free.
If one of my kids whips out a cell to text during dinner, I say: “Put it away, this is family time.”That’s the third leg of the stool: Requiring screen-free time. Notice that I put it after 1) role modeling and 2) creating family time. This third strategy will not work if you don’t do it after the first two are in place. Do it first and it will be read (accurately) by your kids as authoritarian, unfair and unrealistic.
Trying to limit screen time only through rules is a guaranteed road to fights and failure.
The connecting that occurs in real family time matters because kids find out who they are by seeing themselves reflected in other people’s eyes, in relation to others.
You can Twitter, text, Facebook and call, but why is it that when kids are together they’re on their phones? They’re not connecting.
The screen is empty calories. Connecting used to come naturally to kids, pre-computers, when they rode bikes around the block and hung out with neighbourhood kids. The social skills that used to be “invisible” include keeping friendships working, how to manage small conflicts with your friends and stay friends, how to integrate new kids into the group.
Every time you decide whether (or not) to leave your BlackBerry off during family time, think about that.
