The Parenting Thread

[GoktimusPrime]

My daughter likes watching things like Horrible Histories and SciShow Kids on her iPad so what we do is have her stream it on the TV so that it basically becomes the same as watching TV and we know exactly what she's doing. This way it also counts as her TV time and not her device time, which she prefers. It's also more sociable because I can sit on the couch with her and watch it together rather than huddling over a small screen.

Also... she recently taught me how to stream my phone on the TV so now I can watch stuff like The Basics On Transformers on the big telly!

[Trent]

Our 4yo son gets zero device time although he does watch a bit more TV then we would like. I have read quite a few things emphasising the importance of kids learning to deal with boredom and also the concerns around the potential future consequences of getting children addicted to endorphins at an early age. That and I see no advantage to it at his age. I would like to get him a Lego Boost set so he can be introduced to coding but I don’t think the benefits outweigh the problems for him at this stage.

[GoktimusPrime]

Trent: I totally agree with you. I don't even think there's much advantage for our nine year old, but we had to get her a device because she starts Year 5 this year which is when their mandatory Bring Your Own Device thing starts at school. I don't necessarily agree with it, but since it's a requirement we felt the best thing to do was to lay ground rules from the very start. I've recently been speaking to a man whose 18 year old grandson plays games on his device for 15 hours a day and he becomes enraged at his own family and threatens violence against them if they try to take the games away from him. :/

[Trent]

Granted, that would be the extreme end of the spectrum. Most people wouldn’t have to worry about their children ending up like that.

It all comes down to your child. I don’t give my child any device time but that’s MY kid and I know him. Other parents would know their own children and what works best for them. So device time can be present and if used correctly, like Lint said can be a very educational tool. I mean, imagine if we’d, as kids, had pretty much the entire database of human knowledge at our fingertips!

We’d probably just have used it to laugh at cat videos

[Trent]

No shit Sherlock.

But hey, don’t let peer reviewed science get in the way of your unfounded, irrational beliefs.

[GoktimusPrime]

The sad thing is that these articles are only preaching to the choir. Studies show that if anything, they only strengthen the belief of Anti-Vaxxers thanks to a thing called confirmation bias.

Still, sharing these articles is useful for convincing people who are unsure. People who are doubters but not yet deniers and are still able to be swayed to the side of reason. That's the best we can do is convince the doubters; sadly there's not much we can do about the deniers... even though denying facts just makes you look like a complete idiot. *sigh*

[Sinnertwin]