You want to converse with the child but the attention of the child’s eyes is set on the motion of the small screen. However much the adult world may appreciate the usage of mobile phones, they have a reason to abhor it too: the children of today cannot exercise their self-control; self-control when it comes to the number of hours devoted to mobile phones.
Why do you think this is a serious problem? To begin with the education of the children gets impacted negatively. They are more interested in and spend more hours in understanding the phone-applications. Children could be doing the inappropriate activities there! Moreover, they do not know that their real social life, the life in which the physical presence of people matters would be getting hampered. Therefore, keeping a check on your child’s texting habits should become your priority. Here is how:
Why did the hero disappear?
Here, you need to tell the child why excessive texting is a bad habit. The child should know: why texting is a bad habit? You can let the child know that there are bad people out there!
Sports! Sports! Sports!
This is the growing age of the child. The child should be spending more and more time outdoors playing her favourite sports. Let her know about the different sports: badminton, soccer and hockey. Let her experiment with them to know her favourite sport.
An interesting life
Try to make the life of the child interesting enough so that the child does not have a reason to swim in and out of text messages. A favourite way to make life interesting is to tell the child to do one new thing everyday. This has all the pros you can think of!
Keep a fixed routine
The child should not be allowed to keep the phone round the clock. Allow him to use the phone only during fixed hours of the day. Be strict about it! As a parent, you have this responsibility on yourself.
Around the circle
Take interest in the life of the child and know her friends and her friends’ guardians. Talk to them about how texting is harmful for the children. Let them also keep fixed hours for handing the phone over to their children. In this manner, you will be helping the community at large. In this manner, you will be doing something beautiful!
Social etiquettes
While teaching the child about social etiquettes, also teach her how using the phone while talking to someone is bad mannerism. It is very common to see children using phones during family gatherings, family outings, family trips and in-between friends. Often, the most important discussions during get-togethers is the phone they have and the activities they have been able to do on their phone.
With almost everything being a click away, with social media platforms that make digital life seem more important to children and innumerable games on their phones, those days when children used to sit around to play ludo and snakes and ladder seem to have gone away.
What else can you do to prevent your child from excessive texting? Do put your suggestions in the comments below!
Good thoughts kriti