With the extended circuit breaker measures, our parents not only have to juggle work from home and family commitments. From the closure of physical enrichment classes to shifting to full home-based learning, there’s been significant changes to how learning is now conducted and these thus raise new concerns.
We all should expect a new normal even after the circuit breaker period.
Everything is now digital. Will the surge in screen time now for kids outlast the circuit breaker period as our children develop new habits?
Read on to find out the main takeaways and lessons from this webinar. Special thanks to our guest speaker, Mr. Chong Ee-Jay, Deputy Head of FamChamps, who provided us with some illuminating pointers. We would also like to thank all the parents who have taken their precious time out to attend this webinar and participated actively in the discussion.
For all the busy working parents out there, we have decided to condense the webinar into five key lessons. Scroll on to read:
1. Talk talk talk!
If there is any digital lingo shown on this image that seemed familiar to you, but you have no idea how to use it, you just proved our point.
As we move into an increasingly digital age, we need to be familiar with what our kids are exposed to. Before we know how to manage our children’s screen time, we need to first understand it. Our children’s cyber behavior might be different from ours – ranging from the use of Internet slang to using different applications (e.g. Facebook versus Instagram, Vine versus TikTok), or even using different features within an app itself.
By having regular conversations with them to find out more about their digital habits, not only it will foster great conversations, but as parents, we can also keep ourselves up-to-date with what’s happening.
Make full use of this circuit breaker period to connect with your child.
2. Set a baseline.
Many parents worry about the possibility of digital addiction. But instead of jumping into labels (we wouldn’t like it as well), let’s first take a step back.
To address that concern, being aware and understand children’s behaviour can help screen and identify pathological Internet usage. However, parents should first set social media and digital house rules and communicate these with the kids. This will help parents to measure against how much screen time is excessive, if kids compulsively use devices out of those set rules. Sharing your value system with kids (e.g. no violent or vulgar video content) can also aid children to independently identify if certain digital content is off limits.
Some examples of digital house rules can be (and not limited to) with regards to the number of hours spent per day, not using any digital devices during family time, or no using of incognito mode when browsing the Internet.
3. Create, not consume.
Top questions that parents pose when it comes to concerns about screen time: What constitutes screen time? Is watching educational videos on YouTube considered?
Digital content can help promote social interactions, help with students’ learning and encourage creativity. Increasingly, more and more educational applications have been created as well to teach art modelling, phonics, and even coding!
Children should not engage in just mindless consumption of media. Get your child to continuously engage with you while watching the video – have them pose questions or summarise the content! This can really help to reinforce the learning after watching the video.
Be an active creator of technology, not a passive consumer.
4. Be supportive, promote autonomy.
As our kids grow, we might need to adjust different parent behaviours to ensure optimal developmental outcomes. Ee-Jay illustrated this really well with some tips on how to ensure parents can be supportive and promote autonomy when it comes to cyber usage.
Firstly, provide clear rationales for behavioural requests. Children will only hear what they can’t do, and not understand why.
Secondly, don’t shut the kids off if they were to rebut against your decision. It should not be a “my way or highway” situation. Take the chance to encourage them to explain their rationale. This opens up opportunities for exploratory conversations! Give them the chance to express their individual thoughts.
Lastly, promote empowerment in the family. Come to a consensus together with an agreeable decision that everyone is happy with. Compromise! Having buy-in from the kids also mean they are more likely to follow the decisions made collectively.
“If you want to train greater ownership and responsibility, get the kids to switch off devices and hand them back to you themselves”
Mr Chong Ee Jay
5. It takes a village…
As the African saying goes, “it takes a village to raise a child”. But we think it’s not limited to that. It takes a village to achieve just about any meaningful change!
Most of the webinar has been about what should be communicated to the kids (i.e. the message). But the mode of delivery is important too! How the message is delivered to kids, who the messenger is – all these can affect how receptive our children will be.
Simply put, if your child has that cool uncle that he looks up to, maybe he can exert more influence when it comes to advising on cyber usage.
On top of everything else, during this circuit breaker period, we urge everyone to practice self-care too! We are all a phone call away and readily available for help. Please be sure to stay safe and take care of your own physical and mental well-being 🙂
If you did not manage to attend the live session, you can also check out our Facebook page for the recorded live session. We hope that these 5 lessons can help you to manage your child’s screen time more effectively during this circuit breaker!