I just read another article about how the world is coming to the end. This time it is due to, horrors, moms using a cell phone while with their children! Oh no, cell phones are harming children! 10 years ago it was the internet, 30 years ago it was TV, 50 years ago it was rock & roll, 70 years ago it was radio -- I can probably go on to the electric light or the wagon trains to the west. Every time something new comes along, experts "panic" and explain in great detail how these new devices will spell the end of civilization as we know it as bad parents raise monster children. This has been going on for over a century. Yet somehow, most of these children survive to become productive adults.
One expert worries that increased cell phone usage is leading to speech delays in children. Well delays happen no matter what. In the early 1970s, my youngest brother barely spoke until he was 4 -- he was fine, he just had nothing to say. My eldest child was speech delayed, but that was because he had a hearing problem that wasn't evident until he got a little older. Our 3 year old daughter, in comparison, is a chatterbox (at least around us, she can be a little shy around strangers). I would not "blame" any of these instances on our using/not using a cell phone while with the children (especially for my brother as those devices didn't exist back then, at least in the average home) -- it's just the way things were with these individuals.
How is answering a few emails or texting in the evening different then calling a friend or relative on the phone, which is what my parents did in the evening? The article notes that parents are so busy on cell phones in cares they rarely talk to their children. I rarely talk to my children in the car, mostly because I like to concentrate on driving (silly me....). I'm kind of funny about paying attention to the road when I'm driving a several ton weapon at high speeds, does that make me a bad parent? According to the article, it might. Guess what, kids are going to hurt their foot on the slide, for example, whether you are on the phone, talking to another mother or paying complete attention -- it is part of being a child.
I'm tired of being guilted by "experts" for wanting a little me time. Do any of these experts remember what it is like to care for a small child? It is seconds of fun and excitement surrounded by mundane boredom. Watching Dora the Explorer for the umpteenth time is quite painful unless you have something to distract you, be it a book, a cell phone or laptop so I can surf the net or blog (yay for wifi!). It sounds cruel, not devoting every second to your child, but parents need to stay sane. At the moment, both my children are playing by themselves, if not in visual range, at least in earshot, using their imaginations as they play. They don't need me to interrupt them at the moment as they learn things for themselves.
My wife and I are not heavy cell phone users, using them mostly for seeing where the other one is when we need to meet up or to let the other know we'll be home late from work, so I don't know first hand whether the phone usage leads to an 80 percent more likely chance for children to have emotional, social and behavioral problems, including hyperactivity as the article suggests. But children have been hyperactive forever (and they weren't treated for it). If so, how do they explain my younger brother's hyperactivity in the 1970s, decades before cell phone usage became common? Some children are just energizer bunnies, they keep going and going and going and going .... Knowing a few parents with out of control children, I'd guess that it is more likely the cell phone is just a symptom and the parent would've been lax in correcting their child's behavior anyway.
By the way, as a victim of long car trips down to Florida from NYC every summer as a child, I am very much in favor of electronic toys to distract the children. Those trips were incredibly boring, those games like looking at license plates and signs only work so long, and I would have loved to have the toys my children have now. I or my wife may not know every little detail in our children's lives, but I recall my parents not knowing everything going on in the lives of my brothers and sister. But as both my children are generally well behaved, are respectful and listen to my wife and I, I figure we're doing something right. If not paying strict attention to our children at all times like a prison guard makes us bad parents, well, I know plenty of "bad" parents with great children to hang out with.
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