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SCREAM TIME > SCREEN TIME

Don’t most of us feel handicapped when our digital devices are taken away from us. In fact, for some of us the situation gets so bad that we end up with crippling anxiety if we don’t find our phone in the morning or God forbid if the battery dies! Haven’t we all experienced this…
Sad, but true, such are the times we live in and if this is the case with us adults who are generally level headed and rational then can you imagine the impact this is having on our kids?It’s scary to think that we may be raising digital zombies who have no idea that there is an entire world of fun outside of the screens.

Lack of physical and mental activities are the primary sources of depression in youngsters who generally grow up with social handicap caused by being glued to mobile phones and tablets.
We cradle our children and protect them from everything and think that what we do for our kids is the best but sometimes we need to lets kids be kids. We need to let them run and jump, make real friends and learn from real life experiences.

In today’s digitized world it would be impractical for parents to ban their kids from using digital devices because that would result in digital handicap in the future however we need to refrain from raising digital babies. Therefore, creating a balance is most important.
Gone are the days when children indulged in hobbies and played some kind of a sport and parents whole heartedly supported them. Even now a majority of parents tend to feel that hobbies are a waste of time. This notion could not be further than the truth. Hobbies such as painting, drawing, solving puzzles and sports build fine and gross motor skills, co-ordination and improves cognitive development.

As parents we worry about academic performances but hobbies are something that compliments academic development contrary to belief that hobbies get you nowhere. Children have a lot of energy and over active minds and it is wrong to just expect them to bottle up all that exploding energy.
It is better to engage your kids in fun-filled activities than to just hand over a smart phone just because that’s easy to do!

Parenting is hard and good parenting is even harder and no one can dispute that. But Smart parenting, by allowing a healthy mix of SREAM TIME and SCREEN TIME can help you achieve a balance and make life easier and better for yourself and your child.
For a parent, the sound of their child’s laughter is the one thing that definitely lights up their hearts.
Seeing your child run around and scream with joy is irreplaceable.
Let kids be kids and you can make that happen only when SCREAM TIME > SCREEN TIME.

The Social Kyd-Work

The moment we think of networking the only thought that springs to our minds is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. No matter how hard we try we cannot imagine networking to be anything else apart from the social networking sites on the internet.
Networking has receded to digital interactions than real ones to the point that one’s self worth is determined by the number of likes or friends one has on their social media account pages. Can you imagine the amount of pressure that creates in one’s mind to have their worth determined by someone else’s mouse click?

If you have people commenting and liking your selfie you feel beautiful and the next day if it doesn’t happen you feel absolutely down in the dredges. We have given people in virtual reality the power to determine our state of mind in actual reality. Isn’t that sad and worrying? As adults if we are such dopamine addicts resulting from social media apps, then can you imagine what impact it’s having on young impressionable minds?
Children are like wet clay and they model their behaviour from what they see around them. Social Media apps have more lasting impact on kids than on anyone else.

We cannot be the generation raising kids addicted to dopamine hits caused by social media apps. We cannot raise kids who don’t know what real friends are. We cannot raise kids who don’t understand social constructs.
It would be highly irresponsible as guardians of tomorrow’s future to allow such development and the first step as an adult would be for us as parents to keep our mobile phones down and increase our interaction with kids.
Participating in the day to day activities of your children always has a positive impact because a parent’s attention is one thing that can push a kid from 0 to a 100.
Giving ourselves and our children the chance and the opportunity to have actual real interactions and real networking which seems like child’s play must be our goal…not just digitally, but also and more so physically.
A child’s cognitive, behavioural and social skills can only develop with real face-to-face interaction rather than staring at a screen.
The joy of real-time networking is that you end up meeting real people and make real friends.

When we were kids our parents would hold our hands and take us to the nearby parks or play grounds where we would meet other kids who we never met before and become bosom friends. Now with our bustling cities – the traffic, the weather and most important of all = - the safety of our children is a big concern.

Playing around the house or around the neighbourhood which was a commonplace thing in the past, unfortunately doesn’t make common sense anymore.
And no matter what we say a single good friend in reality trumps all the likes and shares and friends in the virtual world.
What we need is to find physical safe spaces for our children to play, learn, interact and flourish with other real kids, not just make digital friends but real friends and improve not their social network but their social Kyd-Work.