Parents-addicted Parents: How Does it Affect Your Kids?
Children’s time spending on digital device is worrying. Yet, we often overlooked that parents ourselves are also indulged in our screens. Taking the MTR, eating out, waiting for the bus, we just can’t help to look at our mobile once in a while.
While we’re killing time with our phones, we missed out loads of chances to interact with our children. For example, many adults would talk to toddlers with a high-pitched voice, simplified grammar and engaged, exaggerated enthusiasm. Seemingly stupid in our eyes, but many studies have proved that back-and-forth conversations between adults and young children is key to strong languages skills.
Hirsh-Pasek have conducted an experiment, putting 38 mothers and their 2-year-olds into a room and the moms are given a task to their kids 2 brand-new words. When the moms were interrupted by a call, the children did not learn the word, but otherwise they did. This is oblivious that parental phone use is influential to kid's language learning.
Occasional inattention from parents may not be catastrophic, but prolonged distraction is another story Signs of addiction is often associated with smartphone use. When phone use is interrupted, distracted adults grow irritable and this is definitely noticeable in kids' eyes. They may be easily enraged, unleashing confusing anger. On the other hand, kids feel disconnected, like they are less important or fun than the device, according to the book written by Catherine Steiner-Adair, a well-known psychologist.
In addition to inattention, kids are great mimics. Parents’ phone usage pattern significantly affect children's future screen time. If a mom uses her phone whenever she’s bored, her kid may very likely follow. This causes kids to take up inappropriate screen use and they are more prone to screen addiction.
Electronic devices are an inseparable part of our lives. For many parents, our work and social circle are all connected with our devices. Still, parents should model good behavior whenever possible. Hopefully, this serves as a reminder to reflect at ourselves and put in effort on reducing phone usage.
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Author: Alicia
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Alicia Chui
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