In this article:
“Whether you are a parent or not, carving out time to turn off your devices, to disconnect from the wired world and engage with the real people who are all around you, is one of the best gifts you can give yourself and the people you love.” – Alan Brown, entrepreneur, coach, and host of Crusher TV
In this article I am going to talk about the various struggle we as parents face with respect to restricting our children screen time, its harmful effect on brain and physical well being, the negative impact on children, It becomes the compulsory action to be taken by the parents to restrict the screen time and for it the parents have to take out time to read books to their kids ,play at least one sport or role play ,play indoor games and make them learn swimming, tennis, gymnastics, dance or judo. We should condition the child brain with new language, new sport, new stories, visiting museum, zoo, botanical garden.
With current scenario and technological advancement and our dependency on Smartphone, we have become a slave to technology rather we should take charge of technology and use it for our requirements to facilitate our living and not become part of our living. There is no such need for children of for age group 1 to 9 years old to use smartphones. New Rules should be made to restrict the use of Smartphones, tablets, TV.
- Screen Time Limits should be set.
- Experimenting 30 Day screen detox.
- Teaching Emotional Intelligence
- Parents should start watching TV shows and movies with children to keep a track and monitor their media usage.
- Limit cell phones for all meals on the dining table
- Indulge your child to play more outdoors the way we use to in our childhood.
- Play Dates should be encouraged more.
- To develop Reading habit amongst kids.
The importance and criticality for keeping the kids away from smartphones and restrict their screen time it’s because early experience matters the most, the first two years of life the brain develops the most. It is necessary to stimulate the brain appropriately by its usage but Overstimulation or Inappropriately stimulation of brain is not good and results in various problems amongst kids they suffer from a short attention span, short memory. The reason for short attention span is because what they see on screen in video is fifty scenes changing in one cartoon which is not true and very different from the real world, hence the expectation from the real world is too much and when they don’t see as per their expectations they find it boring and return to virtual world again.
As per my experience keeping the kids engaged in extracurricular activities is the best way to keep them away from the screen. They develop one sport, art, language and condition their brain and this good stimulation.
“Change the beginning of the story and you change the whole story”.
