School has started for most! And families are back to the grind of school lessons, activities and all for young kids. Yet, there are a lot of resistance at home in order to maintain a regular school-home routine. There may be a number of excuses being off the gadget, being offline, having earlier sleep time, and of course, waking up on their own the next day. Whether you experience difficulty or your big kids can prepare on their own for school, the start of classes is just the exact time to refresh healthy gadget and online life.
Do we abstain or allow?
How much really is enough and how much is too much?
How do we make them digitally advanced without compromising their developmental skills?
How do we ensure that they are online for school purposes and not for gaming or social media?
As much as we parents want to just want to hand our kids the gadget, or allow them to busy themselves in their own online life while we go through our work and home duties, we just cannot be too allowing! It is our parenting role to still be on top of the digital matters they are into. We need to be alert, rather than alarmed or too allowing. Knowing how our growing digital natives are inherently online, we need to instill in them a healthy digital media diet that appropriately balances both online and the offline world.
So, ease through your children’s and even teen’s school year with deliberate steps on how you can manage with your kids their digital life while doing well in school.
Show them you C-A-R-E!
CURATE CONTENT
Not all apps and games are created equal. If the app says 13 and above, would you still allow your young children to use them? And if they say it is for 13 and above, do you consider them to be a good sign right away that they are A-okay for them? No matter what our kids say they want to download, and what they heard from friends to be okay to use, we still need to be in the know of the content of the apps they use and the sites they go to. We may not view all with them, but we need to create in them the reflection skills, on the values of the content they are accessing. Either it is too mature for them, too violent, or way too fast for their young brains to process, it would be best for us to discuss these matters and use media content as tools to develop their critical thinking and proper media habits. We need to allow what is age appropriate not be too allowing of everything.
AGREE ON RULES
Bo offline and ask your child to sit down with you for some focused time. The start of the school year is a good way to discuss their goals for the year, and the actions steps they need to take on the fulfill them. This school include also agreeing on the allotted time you may give for your child in their online use and their study time. Balance is key here. Ask for their preferred day schedule, e.g. school time, rest, play, schoolwork time and their gadget or leisure time. Give your input if needed. In any 1 hour they spend online, they should spend more hours in non-offline matters. Explain the value of having a healthy balance in all aspects of their lives. In your agreements, include the set time, suggested content and apps, and importantly, the consequences if they do not meet what your rules. Balance is key for their use, as well as consistency in applying rules and consequences. Too much of digital life will affect the child in all aspects and will compromise development.
REGULATE
One thing is with these digital native kids is that they know how to go about the online world, mostly more than their digital migrant parents. If content is viewed, agreements on time use are set, parents still need to instill regulation and limits. In regulating time, some families do not allow the kids to have gadget use on weekdays and it works for them just fine. Yet if the big kids are utilizing gadgets for school, the more you need to be clear on how much they can have both for school work and non-school online activities. Consider their gadget use like their monetary allowance. If parents give the kids P100 a day and they used it all up for all their expenses – food, transportation, treats, some minimal school fees, they it is the responsibility of the child to save it or use it. If they ran out of money for the day, just because they use it all up for fries and drinks and end up needing something for school – they the budget allocation for the next day will be consumed. So, agree with your child (depending on their age) on the allocation of online use they may have. If they use all 90 minutes after school for watching YouTube videos and chatting, and they need more time for school work – then ask them to work offline on their school matters. If they work on their school requirement maybe within 30 minutes, then the rest of the 60 minutes is their free time for non-school matters. This is teaching them self-regulation and responsibility.
In terms of external regulation like content and time of use, if parents are not too tech savvy, well, they need to somehow regulate and employ parental filters and control. If your kids are about 4 to 12, they are supposed to be online only for the most an hour a day. Let them use search engines with installed filters and safety settings. Instead of using Google let them use Kiddle, and let them view videos available only at YT Kids. Doing such is limiting your children’s chances of viewing inappropriate content. If you need more help – get parental control settings like Family Zone (www.familyzone.com) so that you can regulate their time and schedule of use, content of what they are into, and still be in the know though reports of what they kids are downloading. This is being alert and not alarmed.
ENGAGE
When we engage, we get involved and we participate. The digital life is supposed to be our ally to make life and learning easier. Somehow, we should not see it as our foe in raising our kids. We need to engage with our digital kids and understand what they are into online. We do not need to do it as well, but simply understand their online interests, the sites they frequent and the apps they are bent on having. This will ensure that we continually try to build relationship with them, establish trust and sincere appreciation of the world our children are in. And we will feel we are not left behind. We know the online activities they have and they’ll have less chances of going behind our back.
Do not forget to engage with your children – online and offline. It is ensuring that they strongest connections are at home – with you, the updated and digital parent.