Screen Time – The Impersonator, The Player

Hello my enthusiastic readers! I know that you all are reading my post after ages. I had horribly slowed down this year, with only one or two posts and that too I wrote just to keep my blog up and running. Even I feel that I had a downfall in my followers. But I am not so sure about it, since I have not kept any track for a year.

So this year is approaching its farewell and hence I thought a lot about writing something, which I love. Since I am into motherhood now, I am more into finding stuff for my kid so that she can stay away from the Digital Entertainment i.e. Screen Time. But to be honest, in spite of many things, still the screen time is not less. But my daughter eagerly waits for what will be her next session or next play.

To make this work, obviously I have to take help of screen and i.e. Instagram. Though Instagram has a lot of rubbish content, it also helps with ideas for home-sitting parents. At first, I started with craft. I am not at all a craft person but since kids love to do this, I started searching for simple craft. Some crafts were cute and some turned into horrible irritations. So, if you are a parent, and if you want your kids to stay away from the screen, then the first option after their homework and other studies is craft. I stay in India and India has many festivals. So my first craft is always of that particular festival. Now, since it’s Christmas and new year time, I have told my daughter to make greetings for their friends. She zealously searches for new designs on Instagram and YouTube. But here, again the screen time. Screen time did not end here because to make that stuff, me n my kid had to watch that particular video. Basically, I encouraged Digital Entertainment by myself.

Simple Craft

I am into social media. I even scroll Linkedin and I do read the professional contents. I do follow a few mompreneurs there and then one day, I came across one post, where I saw that the kid was doing lots of physical activities. The activities were pretty good, but in order to make it work, someone has to be there to make their kid do that activity. As a mom, I can’t make my kid do physical activity alone. Well, any activities, I have to be present there, with her. There were many comments to this post saying one parent has to be free to make this happen. Then one replied that his daughter is into reading and she keeps on reading, claiming that she is not having any screen time.

Well a debate here. Yes, reading is excellent, great, incredible, outstanding. But reading all the time will make your child introverted and boring. Child has to be active and expressive. For that, children should know how to talk and also should know how to fight with their friends. Yes, I make my child read books. But not more than one or two chapters in a day. But wait, I saw that, the man who commented about reading, had actually uploaded her daughter’s photo. The daughter was reading on iPad. So????? screen time again. What’s the use of reading a book, if you are making them read digitally? Yes, his daughter is increasing knowledge, but at what cost?

So scrolling down LinkedIn, recently I came across one mompreneur’s post, who has invested her time as storyteller, saying it is compulsory to keep story reading sessions once in a month, along with kid’s friends and their parents. Well, it’s very hard to find such a group. But I loved this. I don’t know whether I can keep such sessions or not. But I will definitely try this with my kid and one of her friends. The mompreneur even explained how to make it fun. Whatever story we are reading to them, make them draw or make them enact and take their video. In this way, drawing will help in their imagination and enacting will help in their public speaking and will overcome stage fear. This will also make them fall in love with reading.  

And what else can you do with your kids at home to avoid screen time? Teach them stitching. I am not saying teach them embroidery, but some basic stitching like running, back stitching etc. For this, you don’t need to buy anything. Take some rough / old cloth and teach on it. Well, I have started this. Yes, my daughter is bored now. Though, I told her that it’s not a one day job but you can do this everyday for 10-15 mins.

Sounds great, right!! But what if I say that all these activities your kid will not do alone. You have to sit with them, then? Well true, Your kid will not do these activities alone. They will sit for like 5 mins and if you are not around them, then they will easily get distracted and also leave the place messy. So what then? Above all these, first teach them to clean their own stuff, to keep their own stuff at its own place. Else you will be the most exasperated person. So no option, you have to sit with your kid in order to keep them away from the screen. But the problem is, the moment I get busy in the kitchen or in some other house work, my daughter starts scrolling Instagram or will watch videos on YouTube.

So is there any solution to this? Well, as such no. All you can do is be strict in their screen time. Some phones do have screen time options. Unfortunately you have to keep your phone and other devices in the kids zone mode. Always keep a password to payment gateway apps. Download some educational games like recognition of flags or sudoku. At Least your kid will play and learn a few things. I always do this, as soon as my daughter is back from school, she finds one motivational quote or good lines about her and one small puzzle to solve on her white board. She willingly solves such puzzles.

After School Activity

So again the same question; What about the screen time? Well, ask yourself first. Are you ready to give up on social media? Are you ready to give up WhatsApp? Are you ready to keep your mobile aside, whenever your kid wants your attention, no matter how urgent work you are doing or some informational video you are watching? Are you ready to switch off the TV, in your me-time, when your kid is watching mobile? If yes, then yes, screen time will drastically reduce and If no, then invest your time with your kid.

Back in the golden days, we didn’t had mobile phones but we had TV and we all grew up watching TV all the time. We all had a whale of a time watching TV i.e. we too had screen time. Nothing has changed. The only change is that now we have different varieties of the screen. 

The Raisers

Hello my fabulous readers. A very fantastic day to you all. Recently, I came across this series called  ‘Mental Hood’ starring Karisma Kapoor, Dino Morea, Sanjay Suri and others on zee5. It’s a good series and there were two best things I liked about that series. One was the role of Dino Morea, a single father in mother’s friend circle and second was Karisma Kapoor’s blog. Every night she used to write very short and sweet blogs on kids and parenthood and what she learned today as a parent. And hence, it came in my mind to write about the same, parenthood. 

Parenting is actually an easy task. But we make it laborious and demanding because what we see is our neighborhood. We judge our own child, because we have seen other children speaking very well. Here we don’t see any other factor. For example, if the child speaks well but might be the child’s behaviour must not be good at home or the child must not be good at eating or the child must be not good in studies, etc. We all don’t see those factors. What we saw was just his speaking skills and hence we ourselves made the parenting task difficult.

Kids need your own help. He or she doesn’t need any experts. Kids are very friendly and open only with their own parents. All you have to do is just be with them all the time. But what we follow is the rules of society. As such there are no rules, still we womens make these nonsense rules. Rule no 1; as a mother I am allowed to make only mothers as friends. I can’t make a non-mother as my friend. I mean, why this rule? Why can’t I make my own friend circle? why it has to be a mother group only. So here, just because we want to know how other kids behave and what their solutions are. And then we try to implement the same on our kids. I am not saying that the solutions are bad but every child is different. Some kids understand in one sentence, and some need a complete story. We mothers make other mothers as our friends, just because our kids get company. But aren’t we forcing them to make friends as per our wish? here, we are not allowing them to make their own friends.

Like adults, kids have their own ego. They might also not like other kids. So in such a case, as a mother what you will do? Just remove that mother from the friend circle. Right na? Whose loss? Kids have their own world. Let them discover their own friends. Let them choose their own friend.

Whether it is about behaviour or explaining to kids about the menstruation cycle, we mothers always end up asking for solutions and suggestions from other mothers. But we also request teenage girls to look after our kids. Means, we trust them to be a parent to our child, but don’t trust them as their mentor. Try asking them once, I am sure, they definitely will have a perfect solution or suggestion for this. But unfortunately that teenage girl will not be in my friend circle. Obviously, because of some rules. Try keeping kids in different age groups. Let them learn some things from kids who are older than them and some things from the kids who are younger than them. Don’t restrict your kid to be in the same age group.

One thing, I will definitely say this, never teach your kids that “It’s ok”. No, It’s not ok. Teach them to fight back. Teach them to increase their voice if it’s against their wish. If some kid is unnecessarily harassing your kid, then teach your kid to harass them back or else teach them to say “No”  in a loud voice. But we teach them not to say “fuck”, not to show middle finger, etc. Dear parents, if “fuck” is bad word then “Kiss”, “hug” is also bad word. If “fuck you” is a bad sentence, then “kiss you”, “hug you” are also a bad sentences. Like “Fuck”, even “kiss”, “hug” involves body parts and please our whole body is private, not just few parts. Same way, we use the middle finger for some other work also. Like, sometimes, I use my middle finger just to press elevator buttons or sometimes I use my middle finger just to rub my eyes. But that doesn’t mean that I am showing my middle finger to everyone. So if you want to teach all these “bad” things to kids, then please teach them completely and in a proper way. Incomplete knowledge will lead to unnecessary fights between kids and kids will end up giving incomplete-knowledge-complaints to parents. Just imagine, kid crying and pointing at you and complaining that you showed them middle finger, but in reality you where just pointing out something. and that parent will take those incomplete-knowledge-complaints seriously.

I had been to this function, where I was making my child eat with my hands. This lady (not a mother) pounced on me and started giving me lectures that my daughter should know how to eat by herself. She should know her own work etc etc. The thing is, my daughter knows how to eat by herself. But yes, not only in that function but in every function, I make her eat by my hands because in such functions kids are hyperactive and they want to play, play and just play. They forget to eat. and even if we force them then they will have very small quantities. Hence I made this rule for my daughter and i.e. you play, but when it’s food time, you eat properly and then play again. Obviously, my daughter doesn’t listen and hence I make her eat by myself. In this way, even I am satisfied and tension free. I know kids should do at least their own work, but what’s wrong if we give priority to their importance first.  Functions don’t happened everyday.

Let the kids be kids. Don’t try to make them adult. Teach kids only what is necessary, no need to teach them everything. To be very honest, if you are watching TV in front of your kid, and then teaching them not to use “Fuck” word, is absolutely nonsense. Instead, stop watching such TV shows in front of kids. Even knowingly-unknowingly, cartoons portray wrong things. Remember, “Popeye The Sailor Man ” cartoon. We laughed a lot while watching that cartoon, even enacted like Popeye and Spinach became every kids favorite vegetable. But actually that cartoon used to show harassment against women, everyday. So that means, even cartoons are not that safe for kids. You have to watch each and every episode that your kids are watching on tv /mobile. and hence teach them everything in detail, or don’t teach them at all. but don’t give half knowledge to them.

Teaching and learning must be fun. Some parents go for a second child just to teach “what is responsibility?” to the first child. This is at most nonsense. Yes, this mentality still persists. Overnight, you can’t order your first child to grow up. This can lead to jealousy. You can’t say this line to your first child, “Don’t watch TV. I want to cook food, keep an eye on your younger one”.

Kids have their own way of expressing their feelings. Some say in clear sentences, some just prefer to keep quiet. Talking to them in a very soft tone is the only solution. Loud tones will make it more scary. If talking doesn’t help  then go for mobile and tv. Show some moral stories on youtube and then ask them what happened. Definitely they will answer. Going digital, in order to teach your kids, is not at  all bad. In fact this generation is the digital generation and kids learn in a practical way rather than in a theoretical way.

So lets kids be kids. Parenting skills are in everyone. Even teenagers will do better parenting than us. It’s all in our head how we look at our kid. To judge them how they are, or to judge them how others are. Happy Parenting. Hope you all enjoy reading this post. Do like and comment. Pingbacks will be appreciated.

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