Courage around parenting in the digital age: Walking the tight rope between communication, boundaries, and independence

Episode 9

Parenting in this digital age takes courage! In this episode I discuss 5 tips to help guide us with walking the tight rope of digital age parenting between communication of expectations, boundaries, and independence. #BeTHATMomStrong

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Transcription:

(00:00): Hey, Hey, this is episode nine of the be that mom movement podcast.

(00:08): welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age inspired by a mother's love, with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead, that mom movement with your host, Dolly Denson.

(00:35): Hey there, how are you today? I am quite ready for this whole pandemic and stay at home stuff to be over because my hair is way too long. Like we too long. It's, it starts to get a curl after about four going on five weeks of me getting my hair cut because they do have a short hairstyle and it'll start to curl at the end. So it almost looks like a wings right now if I don't do a lot of work to keep those sections of hair straight. So I don't know about you, but the hairdresser, she is the one I miss the most. So today I want to expand on what I talked about last week, which was about awareness around the dangers of the digital age and for things that I wish I would have known or been aware of as far as dangers before I started allowing my kids to connect to the digital world.

(01:26): And I do want to say that I feel like our digital age and our interconnectedness is definitely something that opens up possibility and the world to us and has been such a blessing and a gift during this time of this pandemic. So when I talk about this stuff, it is not because I want us to live in fear, but rather I want to help you have a proactive stance instead of a reactive stance when it comes to raising your kids in today's day and age. So today's topic is around courage in parenting, in the digital age, walking the tight rope, which is what it seems like to me between having boundaries and having a proactive stance and then also allowing some independence and not pushing them away from us because we are trying to kind of be all in their business. So I think in order for us to find a happy medium between those things, we need to have open communication, open understanding, and then having boundaries or just expectations in place that they understand and they under the stand the reason why if they are old enough to comprehend that type of stuff.

(02:38): So that is where I want to go today. I hope that this will be helpful for you. Please consider writing me a review and also connect with me on social media or connect with me on my website. I have free downloads there for you as well. So I would love to hear from you because I want to know if this helping you and if there is anything else that I could add to this that maybe you have found helpful or that you personally need help with. So definitely reach out to me and I want to connect with you and hear from you so we can have a conversation about this and work together in navigating this path. First tip around the whole communication expectations and boundaries is that technology is a privilege. Don't for one second, let anyone tell you that a child has a right to have uncensored access to a device into everything in the digital world without earning it first.

(03:36): Because in that device they have found that one in four children are contacted by predators when they are on social media and that device connects them to the world and they likely do not have the maturity to navigate every anything and everything that is out there in the world that they can consume and allow to influence them. So that's the first tip. The second one is to consider the time that they're allowed to spend. On a device. So things to think about for this, and this is something that I probably would kind of like write out when you're having a discussion is expectations around how much time is allowed on social media, on a device, on YouTube, on gaming and where that is allowed and not allowed in the house such as not at the dinner table and not in bedrooms and not at night when they go to bed and when you go to bed.

(04:32): So with that, I would consider having a, once they do have their own devices, having a central charging station and a certain time at night where all the devices get put up, like I've talked about in another episode, having the unlimited access to it actually they have found effects, their anxiety level because they don't feel like they can disconnect from it. They feel like they always need to be like checking in on notifications and messages from friends and it hinders their sleep. It hinders their normal development, it hinders their sleep pattern and it affects them. If they aren't, they don't have set limits that they are required to go by. So then also going along with time spent on devices, I would have expectations as to how much physical activity they need to be doing during the day. Such as, you know, depending on their age, uh, actually playing or you know, doing some sort of exercise responsibility around chores and different things that they have to do around the house and then consequences that are in place for if these things are not followed or if they break your trust in terms of what the expectations are.

(05:43): What are you going to do for that? Will they have less time that they have on their devices? Will they have an extra chore? And it's kind of up to you and how your parenting style is, but I would just set it up to be proactive from the front end and then have consequences if they break these things repeatedly and then have age appropriate flexibility when it comes to this or expansion of what their responsibilities are, what their privileges are and things like that as they get older. The third tip is to talk about what activities on the device or in the game or on the computer is allowed, like what social media can they be on and what email accounts can they have, what can they do in a certain game if purchases are allowed, do they have to contact you? Can they just purchase anything they want? (06:35): I've had horror stories when it comes to things being purchased that we didn't know were being purchased until after the fact and a bill came along that was hundreds of dollars more than what we expected it to be. Yeah, that was fun. And then besides what social media and what sites they can be on, I would have logins and passwords for all of the accounts and I personally put them on my own phone to where I could flip back and forth between my account and their account so I could see what was going on in the messages and what sites were being looked at, who was, you know, contacting them and stuff like that. And then with the activities that are allowed, I would encourage activities that are not always just consuming information but also creative purposes. So you know, allowing them to be on devices but having some type of educational aspect to it for a certain period of time a day, you know, or with our social learning, our distance learning that we have right now, the educational part is counted differently.

(07:34): It's not just consuming a social media feed and looking at what everybody else posts, but actually having an educational component to being on devices. The fourth thing is to be aware that there is a such thing as digital detox and tech tantrums or digital tantrums. So let me, let me break these down for you because you definitely need to be aware of these. Digital detox is basically where everybody puts their devices away and does some other type of activities such as a game night or the whole family going hiking or the whole family going out on the Lake for a day. Things like that. Something where you are specifically all away from the digital devices or it could just be your child, but there are certain times where they are detoxed from the devices where they are not connected. And the reason for that is because there is brain interaction that is comparable to how your brain is stimulated while on drugs.

(08:32): So they need a detox, they need the limitations that we've already spoken about and then they need periods of time where they don't have it at all. And then with that comes the tantrums, which I've seen firsthand and it's basically kind of like a physiological reaction to being deprived of that stimulation. And then also probably a behavioral component to it. Like they are used to being able to respond to their friends at all hours of the night or you know, their friend is going to think that they're not interested or whatever when it comes to their connections. But what needs to happen is there needs to be boundaries set up to where their friends know that it's 9:00 PM so-and-so doesn't have their phone after that time. I'll talk to them in the morning. And that is promoting better sleep and just overall wellness versus feeling like they're always connected and get anxiety from trying to make sure all the notifications are looked at and all of those things.

(09:31): And then the last tip, the fifth one is be the example for them. And this is something that I know is really hard because adults are addicted to adults consume this too much too and so we just need to have an awareness of these dangers and that they are there for us too. The difference is we are fully matured, our brains are fully developed and most likely we all have other things that we do go do. We don't just sit on our phones or devices or at every hour of the day, but we have addictions too. So we need to get off of our devices as well and spend quality face to face time with each other. I'm having eye contact, letting them know that they are seen and heard and they were important in your life. It's so easy to just let days go by where you're not spending any quality time together.

(10:19): And I know right now things are weird because of this whole stay at home and pandemic thing and a lot of families are spending a lot more quality time together so it may get a little bit old, but in general moving forward as we go out of this whole stay at home thing, just know that your children want to be seen and heard and there needs to be time planned where you are all off of your devices and being an example of being able to function without it. Okay, so I hope that those five tips were helpful for you. Technology is a privilege set up time, expectations with a device, set up expectations on what is allowed and what isn't allowed on a device and having a way to get into the different apps and things. Having digital detox, be aware of the tantrums and be the example for them.

(11:09): Okay. I hope this was all helpful for you. On one of the next episodes, I'm going to go into a little bit more specifics about monitoring of these things because it is extremely hard to keep up with all of the apps, all of the different things. There's actually new apps put out every single week, so it makes it really, really hard as a parent to keep up with it. And I don't know about you, but I don't always understand all of the apps that come out and it, and sometimes there's little innuendos about the different things that we don't know, but they know and they can be very sneaky about that stuff. So I'll go into that stuff a little bit more in another episode. So hope you found this helpful. Talk to you next time.

(11:49): Thanks for tuning in. Being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time.

As always, I cannot go without saying that this is definitely not a path that is easy to walk on our own. So you know where to find me, get in touch with me, let's help support each other. Might be that mom movement is all about us becoming more aware of these things. Having an action plan and helping support each other along the journey and as a foundation of that, your own wellness is a top priority. You need to make it a priority for yourself because when I was in my most difficult days, it was my own wellness routine that sustained me through it because it was my space. It was my place that I took care of me and that no one could take that from me even though all kinds of things were happening around me. So I highly encourage if you do not already have a routine like that, work towards that and if you want tips, tools, the different things that I use in the support community that I have for that as well. I do have one that is specific for mom wellness and then I have another one that is just general beat out mom movement community. So please reach out to me and let's get you connected to one of those, whatever it is that's appropriate for you. All right, have a great day. Bye.