Any parents with me on how big of a struggle it is to keep our kids off the tech? Now we have ZERO judgements on parents that choose to allow phones and iPads for their little ones. We are all trying to make the best choices for our babes. Who the heck knows what the best options are anyway right?! With that said, we have chosen to keep phones and iPads out of our house with the kids. Now, it has come up plenty of times on when they will be getting their own devices but so far we haven’t been getting to much push back. I sense that it will be coming on pretty thick with Capri soon since most if not all of her friends have phones. Here is how we are tackling the conversation of explaining why we choose to hold off on devices for them.
A handful of years ago, we were working on the lesson of how our facial expressions can really be inviting with a smile or can be off putting without one. Totally different topic obviously but I’m going somewhere with this. It led us to really studying the faces around us. We looked at billboards, our friends and kids while we were out and about. I asked both of the girls randomly who they thought looked happy, nice or even most beautiful amongst the people we observed. Every single time it was the person with a big smile on his or her face. Someone who wasn’t smiling didn’t look approachable or happy. This excercise quickly turned to observing people on their phones. Adults and kids. The overwhelming consensus was that no one looked happy or like they were having fun while they were on their phones. The most fun looked like it was being had by the kids and parents chatting at the restaurant, the kids at the park playing, the arts and crafts projects, even our friends at birthday parties.
Our hope with this lesson was that it taught the girls to make this decision based off their own observations and not just our rules dictating to them what they can and can’t do. Either way our rules weren’t going to change but it at least helped support our rules by making the girls a part of the choice.