I was in Washington DC the other day. I meandered through Alexandria where there is a fabulous biking/running trail that runs along the Potomac River and which is fairly busy most of the time. On this particular day, I saw a woman on a bike with a trailer and a preschool age child in the back. It was a gorgeous day and the woman wasn’t working too hard, but clearly enjoying herself. The child in the back was comfortably settled in….with an Ipad.
Of course I don’t know what had happened earlier in their day, whether it had been a terrible tantrum morning, or a night of no sleep, so I attempted to withhold judgement. But I have to admit, this reminded me of carpools I see where a child jumps in the car, gets buckled up and the adult in the car pushes a button, down lower the tv screens and on goes a video, or the adult hands the child a phone or tablet and drives away from the school.
I see it all the time.
Is raising kids hard? Absolutely. For most, it is a brain drain when we leave a successful, challenging and rewarding career, whether at the end of the day only, or for a long period to stay at home with kids. It requires our shifting gears from adult language, concepts and challenges to a child’s language, concepts and challenges and can be, lets be honest, a painful shift.
But we have one shot at this.
And sometimes technology gets in the way.
Now I am not saying I am the best parent ever….far from it! Just ask my kids. And I did not have to fight the technology battle from toddlerhood on like parents do now.
But heightened exposure to technology has reached crisis level. As adults, we have to admit that we are distracted by technology. How often have we been pulled away from a conversation to glance at our devices because they buzzed or vibrated? If we are challenged to stay in the present, then it is a thousand times more challenging for children to avoid technology’s delectable trap.
I am not sure we realize how much screen time children are getting. A study by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation in October of 2003 found that 43% of children two years old or less watched 2 hours of TV per day and 26% had a TV in their bedroom. That was 15 years ago and we have far more accessibility to gadgets, devices and screens now! In 1990, the Neilson Report found that preschool children watched about 3.6 hours of TV per day and as much as 28 hours per week. Since 1990, the availability of technology has skyrocketed to the point where virtually every preschooler knows how to operate a tablet, phone and many gaming devices. Screen time and access is pervasive.
The problem is not just that children spend hours glued to a screen, it is what children see on the screen. Violence drives TV programming (and for that matter, technology programming as well ) and is the most prevalent way of enticing children ages 2 to 11 into being mesmerized by the screen. There are about 80 violent acts per hour on TV geared to children which has been proven to cause them to become detached, cynical and believe that violence is an acceptable form of conflict resolution. More shocking, by the time children are 13 they have seen more than 18,000 simulated murders and 200,000 violent acts on TV. A 15 year, multi-country study found that long term childhood TV viewing was a contributing factor to half of the rapes, murders and assaults in the countries studied.
Another problem is that TV and screen time replace physical activity and social interactions. When we were children, we had limited TV and virtually no computers. We had to make our own fun, mostly outside. We had to communicate, use our senses and solve problems. Time in front of a screen replaces the development of these critical skills. Some argue this is why there is a rise in sensory processing challenges, ADHD labels and behavior issues.
The preschool and elementary school years are when the brain is primed to learn. It is ready to soak up information on how to form relationships, whether they are personal relationships or verbal and language relationships which lead to connecting and deciphering information. But screens and TV remove the learning that is physical, emotional, sensory and cognitive. (Hannaford, Carla)
When children finish their day and we wrap up ours, it is critical that we converse with them. The biking adult with the child in the trailer could have asked questions about what they saw as they rode: planes (where do you think they are going?), flowers (what color are they?), a stop sign (what do we do here?) and she would have provided a serve and return conversation (questions asked and answered, initiated by the child or adult) which is proven to help children develop reasoning deftness, language depth, emotional bonds and creative thinking among other life long skills.
Worn out and can’t answer the same question again? (because we know children often ask the same questions over and over!) then the old fashioned way is still best! Traditional toys are far better than electronic toys and gadgets. As a matter of fact, children who play with traditional toys have a greater quality and quantity of language than children who play with electronic toys. Further, a recent study was conducted on language and cognitive skills of preschool age children and found that those who played with old school blocks developed these skills far better than those who watched Baby Einstein videos. (Anderson and Pempek)
When children finish their day and climb into the car, they are full of information and excitement. A serve and return with their adult caregiver will not only build cognitive and language skills, but will also build an emotional bond grounded in safety and security. When we set the example of ignoring our devices, shutting off the computer at the end of the day and focusing on our kids, then we are helping them build skills that will make them successful adults, socially, emotionally, behaviorally and cognitively. Now is the time to do it, because in a blink of an eye, they will have flown the coop!
