Robot Parents
Once I was out in a restaurant with my parents celebrating my Mom’s birthday. During the dinner my phone vibrated and I reached into my pocket to check my phone. Before I could pull my phone from my pocket my Dad hit my hand and said, “Don’t pull your phone out during dinner, that’s rude.” I looked to the table next to us and noticed a younger couple with their young child. The child was having a hard time being quiet and was making a scene in the restaurant and began to cry. Instead of the parents trying to calm the child down and teach him to be respectful in public the Mom pulled out her phone and stuck it in his face and he began playing on her phone and the child calmed down. I thought to myself my parents told me using a phone during dinner is poor manners, and a younger couple used technology in a restaurant to calm their child down. Then it hit me, technology has the potential to replace parenting.
we are now faced with a problem that younger generation parents are too lazy to actually parent their kids and they just put a screen in front of their kids face so they behave instead of actually parenting their children. Technology has formed as a crutch for parenting and is causing problems for children.
When parents use technology as a way out of parenting a gap of bonding between the parent and child is created. Parents building a bond with their child is paramount and being an active role model in their life is a huge opportunity to build that bond. When parents get lazy and don’t put enough energy into parenting their child and use technology to control their child it kills the chance for parents to build that bond. Studies have shown that children who have a strong and healthy bond with their child early in their life have a cognitive, emotional, and social advantage over their peers who don’t have a healthy bond with their parents. When parents use technology to control their kids they are put a step behind children whose parents have formed a heathy bond. Too much technology use in children also results in problem solving skills.
When parents use technology as a way to keep their children from acting out the child will build a dependence on technology as a way to solve their problems. This can lead to the child always depending on outside forces to solve their problems instead of developing the skills to solve problems on their own. Parents using technology to police their children also leads to poor communication skills.
https://thenewageparents.com/is-technology-replacing-parents/
Studies have shown that children who have strong communication skills early in their life contribute to their ability to succeed in school. Children who have strong communication skills and language skills have a better chance to comprehend what they are being taught and will have a better chance for long term success in school. Parents have a huge impact on their children’s early communication and language skills. Children pick up communication skills gradually and learn the most from the people they spend the most time with, such as their parents. When parents allow children to be exposed to too much technology they ruin the chance to build strong communication skills and it makes learning and understanding much harder.
https://thenewageparents.com/building-strong-language-and-communication-skills-in-children/
Parents using technology as a way to help them parent their children reminds of hegemonic ideas. Hegemonic ideas are ideas adopted by society that help us make sense of the world. Technology is so easy to use and people use technology to solve all problems they have in life such as communication, information, directions, weather etc. Todays parents are so used to using technology and accepted technology as a problem solver in their life. They used the same idea when it comes to parenting. Instead of them doing the work themselves they let technology solve their problems and control their children.
Technology is an incredible tool that’s powerful and helpful, but like anything in life too much of something is bad. When parents use technology as the easy way out of parenting it can cause problems for their children in the future. Parents need to realize the responsibility they have as parents and take no short cuts and be able to parent their children without using technology so they behave.
