I was recently asked by a few older women what my stance is on tech for my kids. I don’t really have a stance but I tried to explain my lack of stance to these women but I don’t think I did it very well at the time. As usually happens, I thought of 15 other things I should have said on the car ride home. So…lucky you…you get to hear these thoughts that I didn’t articulate at the time.
There are days when my kids watch way too much TV. I fully acknowledge that and understand that it is one of my failings. This does occasionally have bad effects especially on my six year old because she loves watching things about pop stars and cartoon girls who solve mysteries and hurt each others feelings. She watches that crap and then runs around talking in a Valley Girl accent taking selfies of herself on my old phone. It’s not great.
So that’s one side of tech, a six year old making duck lips at an old phone and talking in a valley girl accent whilst rollerblading around my dining room chattering about the crush she has on the neighbor boy.
The better side is my oldest two working together(!) to build a model of Cair Paravel in Minecraft, or my oldest texting her friends to coordinate a movie that they’re making, or my 10 year old looking up new ideas for lego builds on Youtube, or my valley girl 6 year old telling me all about honey badgers because she watched Wild Kratts on Amazon Prime or my four year old telling me about Benjamin Franklin because he watched the Who Was show on Netflix.
We also have been using some documentaries to learn about Black History during the month of February. I am fairly well read but I do not know as much as I should about Black History so Netflix and Amazon have been filling in the gaps for all of us this month. We started with Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History on Netflix which is a nice overview. Then we found a doc on Harriot Tubman on Prime (They called Her Moses) and an episode of the American Experience on the Freedom Riders also on Prime.
I’ve been having a harder time getting up to do the gym early in the morning so I’ve been going to the 9:30am class instead and putting on a documentary for the kids while I’m gone. That way they’re learning something and I still get to take care of myself.
Back to tech in general, we have had to set some limits because kids don’t know how to self regulate a lot of these things yet. We do not allow my youngest kids to have their devices in their bedrooms. All devices get plugged in at 8 o’clock in the dining room. We had a situation where my 10 year old stayed up all night because he didn’t know how to tell himself to get off his tablet and go to bed. We obviously can’t have that so we have an evening ritual of plugging in the devices at bed time and the kids can stay up reading if they want to but there’s no tech after that point.
We also try to keep the conversation open around what they’re doing online. We talk and ask about what they’re doing and they kids respond by going into great detail about what they’ve built in Minecraft or how high they scored in Hill Climb Racing or which robot they beat on Chesskid. They kids want to be able to talk about this stuff and by showing interest in their interest, we keep the lines of communication open.
So many of the nasty stories related to kids and tech that we read are fueled by secrecy. We work very hard to make sure our kids don’t feel that they need secrecy when it comes to what’s on their tech. I don’t have specific rules on what they are or are not allowed to watch because I want them to develop their own judgement about what they should or shouldn’t watch. My oldest accidentally started watching a horror movie around Halloween. Once she realized what it was, she turned it off and told me about it. She is so used to using her own judgement that she trusted her instincts and was able to tell me about it without fear of getting in trouble for watching something against the rules. I’m pretty proud of that, honestly.
Our rules around tech change pretty frequently but my goal is always for my kids to develop and use their own judgement to find what is appropriate for them and to have transparency around their relationship to tech. We say pretty frequently that if you couldn’t tell mom about it, you shouldn’t do it. I’m sure as we enter the teen years this spring I may have to change these policies but for right now, this is what’s working.
Messy Homeschool 