| even older...kids struggle to understand reasoning sometimes. It happens with our children and frankly, we provide them with a LOT less tech/crutches than most parents. We always limited TV/tech time and encouraged them to find other sources of entertainment. Take example this weekend. We went on a family trip to a theme park. Got home really late (for them) and they were exhausted. The younger we carried to bed. The next morning we didnt immediately make my youngest take a bath to wash off the residual sunscreen etc. Rather we did our morning routine. Morning got away from us and we see by about 9:30 hes playing in the play room (boy loves building things with blocks, legos, whatever he can ) but is itching like crazy. We see a splotches developing. "Hey son, lets go take a shower, then you can get back to playing" "No i want to play" "You are really itching (and whining about it), lets wash off everything from yesterday and you can get right back to it" "no i want to play" And a standoff ensued. In the end he complied and I had to put my foot down, and he cried most of the time. We tried to explain. Calmly tried to reason and get him to calm down. Eventually during the shower I had to raise my voice, threaten punishment to get him to snap out of his own feedback loop, collect himself and stop. There was no reasoning involved. It was, if you dont stop, punishment will be had. This also happens to a larger degree with our older (pre-teen) kid. Shes a little more reasonable (clearly she can see 5 minutes out) but a week, a month, years? Nope. Its always funny when people just say kids are smart and to reason with them. Its true to a degree. But making sacrifices in the short term for a better long term outcome is not natural, its a learned trait and there are many adults that cant manage that (just look at the CC debt rates in the US). Kids of any age tend to live in the short term, wanting short term rewards and not teaching them long term rewards does them a disservice into adult hood. Managing tech is a part of that. Very few are going to be "reasonable" about moderating their usage especially as many peers will have unfettered access to the same. Hell *I* sometimes struggle with it and I dont really have any social media (short of here and a waning use of reddit). And before you go there. My relationship with my kids is pretty solid. Moreso than most, we tend to keep lines of communcations open and they dont generally keep things from us because they know we will be judicious with what they tell us. But at the end of the day they are still kids and we are their parents, not their friends. |