2 Bad Phone Habits Hurting Your Relationship With Your School-Aged Kids
Disconnect to reconnect with what matters most.
“Get off your phone Daddy!”
My daughter barks at me, a look of frustration carved into her face.
I’m assembling a 1000 piece Minecraft puzzle with my two kids, aged 11 and 9. At least I’m supposed to be. For the third time in the last 20 minutes I check my notifications, and this time my daughter has had enough.
Her disappointment in my phone addiction is shared by kids all over the world, as their parents increasingly disappear into devices to escape the mundanity of daily life, vainly hoping their phones hold the secret to some hidden fulfillment.
Most parents know their phone use has become a problem, but many underestimate the damage we are doing to our parent-child relationships.
But with a bad habit as powerful as phone dependency, where do we even begin?
Here are 2 phone habits you should quit to stop hurting your relationship with your kids:
1. Stop scrolling at the playground.
A bleak picture is painted at today’s playgrounds.
Parents escort their delighted children to the play zone, find a nice park bench to deposit themselves, and promptly bury their heads in their Instagram feeds.
The contrast is startling. One half of the population is a horde of laughing children careening around a curated jungle. The other half is a static group of adults glued to their tiny screens.
Many parents do this for a break.
Exhausted by their child’s manic behavior, they just want to escape. But stealing a moment for scrolling while your child plays tag is not a harmless act.
Here’s why this is a mistake:
• You are modeling phone-dependent behavior that can lead to your children developing their own unhealthy screen habits.
• You will miss out on memorable moments of joy and child development.
• You are going to erode trust as your kids may feel their needs are secondary to the phone.
• You will increase your stress because the inputs from your phone can cause cognitive overload.
I used to fool myself into thinking I was being productive by clearing emails while my kids played don’t touch the lava.
Instead of joining them, I would leverage the opportunity to clear the email decks while they were distracted. I was drained from a morning of being exploited as a human bouldering wall, and I took them to the playground so I could have some quality time with my phone.
But the decks are never cleared.
Your children will grow up though.
If you’re spent from a morning of diffusing small human car crashes and just want to escape, I get it. You need a break. But what you need a break from is the conflict and resistance inherent in the parent-child relationship, and a reminder of how joyful parenting can be.
Which is why I want to share this with you.
Leave your phone in the car.
Or at home. Or on flight mode. Just make it inaccessible. Temptation usually wins, so remove it
When you take your kids to the playground, or any similar social environment, commit this time to be 100 percent present with your kids. Take it one step further and schedule phone-free time with your kids at least 3x per week.
Nothing is more urgent than what’s right in front of you.
2. Stop checking your phone in the morning.
Weekday mornings with school kids can be a warzone.
Phones are expertly designed to kidnap our attention, and in the morning madness the allure becomes difficult to resist. But reaching to your phone for a reprieve from the chaos is a mistake.
Your phone is now competition.
- The more parents are distracted by their phone, the more kids act out.
- This leads to a vicious cycle: as kids act out, parents become more stressed.
- The more stressed parents get, the more likely they will turn to tech for relief.
- This reliance on phones only leads to more acting out.
- This cycle sets a negative tone for the entire day.
The kids crave your attention just as much as your phone does, but their methods are not designed by psychologists and marketing experts. They can’t compete with a billion-dollar industry whose sole purpose is to find increasingly more effective ways to capture your attention.
Their approach is far more “direct”.
In their little minds it becomes reasonable to resort to drastic measures — like grabbing the cat’s tail, stabbing their sister with BBQ tongs, or clinging to your shin-bone like a spider monkey.
My kids used to fight like rabid dogs over who would get to use the tablet first in the morning.
They saw me spending the bulk of my morning glued to my phone, scrolling entertainment newsfeeds while I slurped coffee and inhaled skittle-flavored vapor. The last 5 minutes before we left for school were always an angry scramble to collect lunchboxes, school bags, and dry socks. Tempers would flare, tears would fall, and we’d depart on poor terms.
That’s why I’m telling you this.
Leave your phone in the car.
“But wait — we haven’t gone anywhere yet…”
The point of this is to put friction between you and your phone, at least for the hour before you have to leave for school or work. If you’re not driving, put it somewhere incredibly inconvenient that makes you think twice about retrieving it.
Liberate your mornings from the tyranny of your phone and be present with your kids.
But what if:
- “I use my phone to check the time.” Get a watch.
- “I need my phone to check the weather.” Look outside.
- “I have to respond to messages.” No you don’t.
- “Work needs me urgently.” Too bad.
- “It’s my only ‘me time’ before the chaos starts.” Wake up before your kids.
My favorite objection is: “I just need a moment to myself.”
I hate to break it to you, but you are not alone when you are on your phone.
The whole world is with you.
The rest of the world doesn’t need you right now. But your kids do.
Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog
