This habit has a negative impact on your child's psyche. Check if you do this too
Usually, parents try to provide the best for their children. However, it turns out that they can often unknowingly harm them. One seemingly innocent habit has a very negative impact on the psyche of children and may affect their entire later life.
Mobile phones dominate our everyday life. Today, they are used not only for communication. We use smartphones to shop, pay bills, read books and perform many other activities. Many people find it difficult to imagine a day without access to a mobile phone. This applies not only to young people, but also to adults. The social campaign “Close to the phone – far from the child” conducted by the Empowering Children Foundation draws attention to how much harm a parent who constantly stares at the phone can unknowingly cause to his or her child.
How does parent's phone use affect the child?
There's nothing wrong with using your phone occasionally with your child. The problem occurs when we reach for the smartphone frequently and pay more attention to what is happening on the device's screen than to contact with our child. A parent busy with a smartphone is unable to respond adequately to the signals sent by the child and to respond to his or her needs at the right time. Such behavior should be considered as negligence. It negatively affects the child's psyche at a very early stage of development. Therapist Magda Winiarska-Smoczyńska from the Empowering Children Foundation (FDDS) mentioned this in an interview with WPROST:
“Even though we cannot recall memories from the first years of life because they are not rooted in cognitive development, experiences from this period greatly influence our later behavior, associations related to relationships, closeness, self-perception, awareness and readiness to communicate our own needs. This is why the attentiveness and emotional availability of the parent taking care of the child plays such an important role. It allows him to quickly recognize and respond to, sometimes very subtle, non-verbal signals sent by an infant and small child,” the expert explained.
The consequences of ignoring a child by a parent who is glued to the phone are long-term and affect the young person's entire life. In addition, and what is particularly important in the case of teenagers – as Łukasz Wojtasik, coordinator of the “Child on the Internet” program at FDDS, points out in an interview with WPROST – “the behavior of parents and the way they use new technologies are largely replicated by young people.” Repeating negative patterns of using digital devices increases the risk of developing addiction to modern technologies.
How can a parent limit their child's phone use?
The first step to making changes is realizing there is a problem. So it's worth taking a look at your daily habits. It is important to designate a time during the day when we do not use the phone. We turn off the device or put it in a hard-to-reach place and focus only on the child. At first it may be half an hour. It is important to dedicate one hundred percent to the young person and gradually extend the time without a smartphone. If you must use the phone, explain to your child why you are doing so and limit the use of the device to a minimum.
