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If so, you may be wondering how to change your child’s behaviour, only to discover that trying to change the behaviour of your children now that they’re addicted is like trying to close the barn door after the horse has bolted.
Technology is now an everyday part of our lives, and it can’t be hidden from or ignored – it’s everywhere, so much so that kids clamour for iDevices, consoles and Facebook accounts from seemingly ever earlier ages, although with tiny babies using iPads and iPhones, thank goodness it’s not possible to implant an iDevice for pre-birth babies to use – or at least, it’s not possible yet!
An article from News.com.au talks about how young kids play with consoles “too close to their eyes”, and talks about a new third-party Nintendo 3DS case that “sounds an alarm” if the console is too close to a child’s eyes.
This is technology helping to solve a problem created by technology, and it’s a fantastic, innovative development.
But it also highlights the problem of today’s overworked, busy parents who have turned to technology to help babysit the kids.
It was an issue in the days of television, where we were all warned that our kids’ eyes would go square if they watched too much.
We were warned kids would turn violent if they played too many violent video games, while also being told it was perfect for “hand to eye co-ordination” – despite the fact humanity has survived for millions of years before modern electronics ever came on the scene.
Ultimately, no matter how busy parents are in earning a living to feed the family, buy everything that’s needed, send the kids to school, excursions and everything else (let alone the ever growing budget needed to ensure the kids are fully up with technology), the need for personal responsibility and taking responsibility for what the kids are doing has only increased, not lessened.
Using tech tools as occasional babysitters is one thing, but overusing tech for that purpose leads to its own problems, and while it’s clearly not easy, re-setting limits for your kids’ technology, TV, gaming and online time is the only responsible thing that can be done, just as our parents set (or at least, tried to set) limits for us when we were growing up.
Just because everyone else’s kids are addicted to technology doesn’t mean that yours need to be irretrievably addicted too. Setting new limits won’t be easy and they’re surely be tears before bedtime, but if you don’t set limits now and re-establish your parental authority (and parental responsibility), when will you do it?
As they say in those Porsche commercials… if not now, when?
Whatever the situation with technology and your children, may you have good luck in ensuring your kids get the balance they need between technology, gadgets and the rest of human life.
