Are cell phones bad for parenting?

What makes this gadget so indispensable? It deafens you to the cooing of your baby and ignore those tantrums that he actually throws only to get your attention. We are so busy communicating to everybody but that little baby who does everything from pull, push, throw, snatch, grab and last resort cry but still goes unheard.

I see fathers swinging their kids in the park with their handsfree or moms walking with the pram with their heads tilted on one side and most importantly the help we hire is the one who can never get enough of it. They are the ones who are glued to it totally.

Think about it how many times has replying to a friends PING been more important than a question that your child has asked? How many times have you said excellent without listening to what she said or seeing what she had to show?

Top places that the cell phone has made its space:

1. Dining Table

2. Drive time

3. Parks & Gardens

4. Holidays

5. Bedrooms

Most importantly its invaded that EXCLUSIVE time with your child. There is no time when you actually put it away and say let it ring its okay I will look at it after wards lets finish what we are doing. Kids fail to understand why its so important to us and for that matter any gadget that we just cant seem to get enough of. I think even though they don’t understand what it does they do understand that my parents cant do without it. He sees the phone, and he thinks, I’ve lost my dad’s attention. And that’s what children crave: attention. We all do.

We are not talking about being in an extremist with — no phone calls around a child, ever. But I am talking about giving more thought to all the missed opportunities for communicating with a child. For simply being with her. It’s to just break that habit and take  a break. Start by doing this for 15 minutes a day. Just leave the phone in another room and give that undivided attention to your child. Let your fingers stroke their heads instead of typing all the time. Let them know that they are important and that time with them is important vs. something URGENT as we always term it to be. The word URGENT has actually lost its meaning in our children’s dictionary as we use it so often with no relevance.

Enjoy the music in the car and the beautiful learning’s of nature as you drive with your child, feel the soft grass under your feet when you walk with her at the park, hear the birds sing as you swing her, catch butterflies in the park with her little hands, help her build that castle she always wants to complete with the sand. Ride that pony with her so she knows if she falls you will be there right beside her. Of course there’s always plenty of time for a phone call, or 10 of them. Children will always do things only at their pace! They will take their time to love, eat, play, grow, read, understand, solve. You waited patiently while they took 9 months to come out right?

Is giving them their own phone a solution to the problem. Wait until she gets it maybe she will disown you then. Then all your fears about radiation and phone bills will seem lesser of a worry than the emptiness and void that you will have when you converse with her.

Wait till the day she tells you mom/dad I am busy can we chat later.