The Book of New Family Traditions
31/10/2021
Creating Meaningful Christmas Celebrations
01/11/2022The return of school routine and face to face connections presents a great time to re-negotiate the boundaries and rules for your child’s mobile phone, device usage and gaming habits.
Primary-aged school children and teens do not have the capacity to self-manage their devices. Now is a good time to sit together and discuss the ‘Where, when, how long to use devices, and what can they be used for?‘
- no phones or iPads in bedrooms or around the dinner table.
- Phones should be docked in the kitchen overnight as children often check their phones during the night and first thing in the morning. They get up to nonsense and compromise a healthy sleep routine.
- Phones are no substitutes for alarm clocks.
Remember, that giving your child a phone is a) a privilege and b) like opening a pandora box.
Overuse and misuse of screens can take a toll on children’s mental, physical and emotional wellbeing, creating problems with everything from face-to-face socialising and compromising their sleep. The key to screen use is balance.
Three helpful articles on how to wean your children off their devices and find a healthier real-life and onscreen balance.
It is illegal for children under the age of 13 to use social media apps.
Research has shown that children’s brains are not mature enough to process the content of social media, nor has their critical thinking capacity fully developed to understand that much of what they see is not real. Your children are being exposed to complex concepts including pornography.
Please contact me to obtain a Parenting IT& Devices Contract which you might find useful to re-negotiate boundaries and rules.
It examines your family values and helps you to collaboratively negotiate realistic rules and expectations.
The contract is a positive parenting disciplinary tool allowing children to be accountable and take ownership of their actions.
