IS YOUR CHILD HOOKED TO SCREEN?

In my parenting sessions’, there is one most commonly asked question among
the audience, “My child is hooked to the screen” It starts from the parents
having as little as 1.5 years tiny toddlers to going beyond 9 years. And
thereafter, things go so much out of proportion, that small rebellions start
happening at homes once kids attain their 12 years and plus. This is
undoubtedly one of the most widespread challenges of the new age parenting.
The technology options may have increased a decade back, yet there is one
mistake being committed in most homes and by maximum mothers.

Many times, the answers and the solutions come from my personal do’s and
don’ts as a mother myself. My memories rinse off when I became a conscious
mom a decade back. As an entrepreneur, my work was my phone. I still
remember, my mobile usage was even more than the call centre executives.
Yet today, I feel surprised to see why my own child has no screen craving at
all. At the most I remember is when my child crawled into her 6 months, after
every 2 hours when it was meal time for her, I would discontinue with my
meetings and work, and head straight from my work space @ home. In just 15
minutes, I would share little stories with her and make her eat and off to my
work again. May be consciously or unconsciously, my phone would never be
on my dining and I never ever felt the need to divert her attention to something
else while she relished the new flavours’. My professional commitments could
wait for those essential 15 minutes. It would be strictly ‘our time’. And this is
what worked wonders for my child. Did I press the right buttons? Although, Its
wrong to judge the parenting styles, still there are a certain strict ‘dont’s’ that
need to be universally followed.

The same year, I noticed among my family and friends that most new moms’
were repeating one common thing. Which is still being done by my next
generation and I call it ‘An obsessive self compulsion of deliberately playing a
rhyme, a story or a cartoon on the ipad/TV/Mobile when the child is made to sit
and eat” This one habit is out of my understanding so far, as a parenting
coach. Why is it essential to distract the child while he/she learns to eat.
Eating which is by far the most important part of our being alive. What on earth
educates us that the meal time has to be a screen time? Of course a 6 month
won’t be guiding us on this. Its completely the parents who inculcate this
pattern in utter unawareness or may be your toddlers have already seen you
using mobile while eating!

Not many people may know that the digestion process starts from the
chewing itself. Gradually, the child starts associating screen with food as

mandatory and misinterprets as integral. A meal that can be finished in
15 minutes extends to an hour. Food eaten peacefully or in a celebratory
mood gets digested in 50 minutes. Else it takes approx. 3 hours. More
the chewing, the better the digestion. When distractions are there,
children chew less and gallop more, this delays digestion and slows the
formation of healthy cells. No wonder, our children have more
infections, ill health and emotional imbalances like never before.

And a child who has been conditioned to eat while watching something
consciously starts linking the meal and the screen so much that this
routine further spills to more hours a day. And the unfortunate outcome
is, children stop eating if something is not played only at homes but also
outdoors.

Therefore, the new moms need to wake up soon. No parenting is wrong
ever. But at least there must be some logic or some insight behind it.
Hence, rub your intellect, innovate better methods of parenting. As this
is the only thing in the world that can’t be learnt from books!

written by : Meenu Chopra