Ellen Gellar Kamaras
Shutting your smartphone for allotted time periods to be totally present for your children will reap enormous benefits.
It will increase their emotional intelligence (EQ) and give them valuable lifelong tools to navigate challenges and relationships. Being emotionally intelligent is key to how one reacts to life’s challenges. Unplugging from your phone will help your kids feel that they are important to you and will help them to develop resilience. And it’s good for you, too.
When You Turn Your Attention to Your Phone
I am blessed to live in Brooklyn Heights, right next to the Promenade, which affords a breathtaking view of the Lower Manhattan skyline and New York Harbor.
Many young families live in this section of brownstone Brooklyn. When I walk my dog, Davy, I see many parents and nannies pushing strollers with infants and toddlers.
It is rare when a parent or nanny is not looking at his/her phone while pushing the stroller. There are times that we need to check our phones. I am guilty of stopping in the middle of the block to check my phone and having pedestrians “excuse me” their way past me.
What do you think is the impact on the child whose parent or nanny is constantly looking at her phone? We have all seen kids trying to get their mom’s attention while the mom was scrolling.
Even my dog gets into trouble when I stop to check my phone for a text or to send a quick email. Inevitably, another dog walks by and Davy pounces or growls.
Might Davy be trying to remind me that this is our special time together and I need to be present? I now make a concerted effort to keep my phone in my pocket.
If we are engrossed with our phone screens, it means we are not engaging with the others we are with.
What is the impact of parental or caregiver phone use on the children? What is the cost of those missed opportunities when we could be connecting with our children? And what is happening at home regarding phone usage in the children’s presence?
First, let’s address the babies.
Why Talking to Your Baby Matters
According to the Essex Child and Family Wellbeing Service, child’s first 1,001 days (from conception to the age of two) are crucial in developing attachment, physical development, communication, and early language. Children need to be experimenting with sounds, babbling, making noises, learning vocabulary, and communicating from as early an age as possible.
This is why we need to talk to our babies while they are out in their strollers and at home. In the first 10 to 12 months, babies enjoy being talked to, move their heads and smile, and move their arms and legs in response. Babies listen when you sing songs and start to understand when you use their name. It is never too early to start reading books to encourage vocabulary building.
Raising Children in the Digital Age
According to the Center for Fathers and Children in Sacramento, California, “When it comes to raising children in the digital age, one of the worst things a parent can do is give their kid a smartphone and hope for the best. Turns out, same goes for the grownups.”
That’s right! We talk about the negative impact of screen time and too much access to social media for our kids but are we as parents being appropriate role models?
Robin Nabi, a professor of communications at UC Santa Barbara, headed up a study of parents to observe how different forms of media impacts the emotional intelligence of their kids. The results of her study indicated that the EQ of children can be negatively affected by their parents’ use of smartphones. It’s the very familiar scene that I see on the promenade of a caregiver absorbed with a smartphone screen and their little charge is seeking attention.
Let’s define emotional intelligence or EQ. It is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage both our emotions and the emotions of others. EQ’s key components are self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management.
Research shows that kids with high EQ are likely to have better academic performance, stronger relationships, and enhanced mental health. EQ provides the tools for children to handle stress, solve problems, resolve differences and arguments, and make healthy choices. A solid connection also exists between EQ skills in kids and decreased depression, anxiety levels, and aggression.
Nabi concluded that children respond to their parents. It does not matter what the content is that the mom or dad is viewing on their phones. To the child having a parent looking at their phone translates to a lack of responsiveness to them.
Her research found that parental phone use is associated with “still face.” This expressionless appearance is frequently taken for depression, which can adversely affect children’s development of emotional skills.
Advice to Parents Based on Research
Nabi’s advice to parents is to be more mindful about phone use around children. “Where their eyes are sends a message to their children about what’s important.”
Dona Matthews, PhD. Is a developmental psychologist and author living in Toronto. She describes the findings of five research studies to support her views on parental phone use – parents on devices distress children and reduce their resilience.
These studies highlight the harm parents can cause when they focus on their phones. Although they may be physically present, they are distracted and less responsive to their kids.
Study #1: Moms on cellphones have children who are more negative and are less resilient.
Study #2: Children feel unimportant and feel they need to compete with smartphones for their parents’ attention.
Study #3: Distracted parental attention harms children’s social/emotional development.
Study #4: Cellphone use interferes with healthy parenting. Study #5: When parents use cellphones kids feel sad, mad, angry, and lonely.
Why Is It So Important for Children To Develop Resilience?
Think about how we as parents/caregivers coped during the pandemic. Our ability to be resilient enabled us to function and take care of ourselves and our loved ones in the new normal. The same is true of Israelis and Jews in response to the atrocities of October 7th and the ensuing war and surge in anti-Semitism. We continue to use our Jewish mindset and practice values of optimism, faith, hope, and positivity. Most importantly, we try to exercise resilience.
After October 7th, Jewish resilience meant the creation of a new normal. Resilience requires not only perseverance but also the ability to adapt to adverse events.
Developing resilience for a child means helping them to deal with life and cultivate the tools and skills they need to manage challenges as they grow up. Resilience will let them stick things out and not give up in the face of adversity or failure.
What Can Parents Do?
School principals and parents concentrate on banning or limiting children’s phone use. Therapists also recommend they address other spaces where phone use/overuse occurs. Dr. Katie Hurley, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, author, and speaker shared what she hears from her teenage clients about their parents’ phone use. They say that their
parents consistently criticize their children’s phone use but do not curb their own use. “Hypocrisy aside, teens tell me that it’s frustrating when their parents can’t give them their focus. Frustrated with their parents over their lack of attention, teens curb negative emotions by watching videos on social media.”
Parents frequently have the same complaint, that their kids are glued to their phones and do not react when they try to engage them. They also turn to their own phones when rejected by their children. Both parents and kids get stuck in an endless loop of fractured communication and hurt feelings because technology steals focus.
Dr. Hurley’s solution involves getting the families to look at the problem from both sides and see how technology is stealing opportunities for quality time and positive interactions.
Both parents and children need to adjust their technology habits to restore trust and positive communication. She emphasizes that it is our parental responsibility to be a good role model for our children.
By prioritizing engaging with each other and having fun together, families can curb tech overuse in a positive way.
Curb & Compromise
Below are some of Dr. Hurley’s suggestions to restore positive and meaningful family conversations without throwing our phones away.
Establish technology family guidelines together. Even though the rules may vary by age, it is important to explain the differences to your children. One example is no phones at the dinner table.
· Devise systems that easily allow us to decrease our phone use. One idea is to provide a storage basket or central charging station when phones are not to be used.
· Practice active listening skills together. Maintain eye contact while you talk to each other, ask follow-up questions, and reflect on what you heard.
· Create working communication systems. There are exceptions. Parents may have to deal with work issues, for example, a journalist with a deadline or a doctor on call, and kids may get a notification from school. Make a follow-up plan to continue the conversation and be clear when you set boundaries around work.
· Schedule activities your family enjoys doing together that do not involve technology.
