The Daily: The Parents Aren’t Alright - Link
My crummy tl;dr - Intensive parenting and social media parenting shit making us feel guilty for everything. Previous generations parenting was going about life with the kid doing whatever on their own. Now we are on the floor with them always in their business thinking and preparing ten steps ahead
I’m curious what parents of kids 5+ think of this. At one point in the podcast, someone says, “Bigger kids, bigger problems is what they say. It becomes less physically demanding, but it’s more mentally demanding.”
My kids are 4 and under, so I’m definitely in a phase where they are physically demanding.
The thing that worries me the most is digital devices and internet access. In our house we keep tight controls on screen time and internet usage but the majority (if not all) of the other kids in their school have unlimited access to internet which means second hand exposure and there’s very little we can do about it. I can’t just stop them from having friends… it’s steessful
We’re not there yet. To me the obvious would be to explain to them something like browsing the internet is similar to being alone in the world’s biggest city and you cannot always be there to protect them whilst online?
I am definitely over simplifying it, but I feel portraying the message that there are good people, bad people and absolutely abhorrent people, is all you can do to protect kids online. Also that everyone takes a big step to the dark side when they are anonymous because for some reason, watching a train crash is more interesting to us that watching one drive past.
I never really thought about controlling screen times for anything other than to make sure kids’ heads spend some time in reality, do you feel it is an effective or important tool for protection too?