My daughter met a couple of kids her age last weekend. One of the struggles and challenges of homeschooling is getting her to socialize with kids her age. She has gotten used to having conversations with grownups, she is not used to making small talks with other kids. I don't see it as an issue, I like that she's like an old soul with a young heart. But whenever we get a chance, we organize playdates with other kids homeschooled and traditionally schooled.
One of the kids asked my daughter, "Nanonood ka ng mga memes?" ("Do you watch memes?") My daughter just answered, "Huh? What are memes?" I believe what the kid was talking about was the short videos on tiktok. Then she told them she doesn't have those on her phone.
The adults that heard the conversation then asked me how I was able to control my daughter and stop her from watching those on the internet. Nowadays, internet becomes a part of a person's life. It is a part of my life, it has been for a while. And then I looked back to my daughter and thought about how I was able to steer my daughter away from those attention span shortening videos.
In the first place, don't start. During the pandemic, those videos started to fill the time of everyone, children and grownups alike, in every household. I was almost sucked into these short videos at some point, but then who wasn't, right? My kid was about 3 years old at that time. It was a good thing I was able to stop before any bad habits were formed. Because if there's something harder than forming a good habit, it's breaking a bad one.
Feed their brain healthy food. Our entire homeschooling journey is all about feeding her a banquet of ideas. These ideas are like food to her brain. As parents, it is our choice if we want to feed our children junk food or healthy food. Looking for sources of videos that are good food for the brain is a tedious task. My husband takes a lot of care screening the videos that our daughter watched during her early years. I looked for educational videos on Netflix, Disney+, HBO, and Youtube.
I'm glad both me and my husband worked as a team in ensuring that our little one doesn't get hooked on those short videos. Don't get me wrong, I myself spend some of my time watching reels after reels, short videos after short videos. But the bad thing about it, aside from it wasting a lot of my time, is that the videos were cut too short and so fast paced, and before our brain could digest what we just watched, another video comes along. Some of those videos are educational, supposedly good food for the brain, but part of feeding our brain good, healthy food, is giving it the time to digest it.
Divert their attention to much healthier habits I was forced to teach my daughter to learn to read as early as 3 years old because I wanted her to form the healthy habit of reading. And she was not just reading any kind of books, I read her good books, educational books, living books, not just entertaining books. I also devised activities that would take her eyes off the gadgets.
Don't take the short, and easy way All our kids want is our time. And believe it or not, whether we have a job, or a stay at home mom, we can't always give our kids that. Between all the adult stuff, and all the other tasks we have to do, it would seem that playtime with a young kid would take so much time. And this is why most parents, me included, resort to just giving them to the mercy of the gadgets. It's okay to have days like that, but always remember to filter the feed. Filter the type of videos that your kid will watch. Remember that the food for their brain should always be healthy.
Basically, that's all I've done to make sure that my kid doesn't get too attached with her gadgets. My husband was so over excited in giving gifts, he went ahead and gifted her a cellphone and a tablet. I'd say the best way to keep kids off their gadgets is to not get them started with the habit in the first place. Like I mentioned, it is harder to break a habit than to form a new one.
But if your kid already has been in the habit of spending so much time with their gadgets and their videos, and their games, there's still a way to lead them to forming a good habit towards their internet and gadgets. You can start with setting boundaries, limiting the time they use their phones and watch those videos. The secret is not to cut off the usage right away.
No matter how we fight it, internet has been a part of our lives. Our parenting strategies should adapt with the changing times. Everyone has been talking about how internet was bad for kids but still everyone's kids are all hooked up on internet with all these short videos and dance crazes and challenges, etc. I still think that internet has its good as well as its bad. We just need to find the balance.
