Giving Up WhatsApp to Play IRL With My Kid
Using technology in moderation won’t do any harm, but talking and playing with your kid also pays dividends down the line
One weekend afternoon, after building endless Magna-Tile castles and Lego trains with my daughter, my phone buzzes. It’s a group chat I have with some of my girlfriends and while I’m craving some adult interaction, I know that the minute I bring the phone out, Ella will laser into it like a cat on a mouse.
Way back in the depths of the closet, I see a tiny plush puppy foot, which belongs to the Laugh and Learn Puppy I’d successfully shoved in the donation bin months ago but never took to Goodwill. Knowing it’ll buy me ten minutes, I bring it out, power it on, and set it in front of Ella, who happily bangs on its foot and heart like an unhinged EMT, eliciting chirps and half-sung songs, as I chat away.
My WhatsApp chain had been a lifeline for me pre-child but somehow the isolation of sleepless nights and 5 a.m. wake-up calls have made it seem even more critical postpartum. At the other end of my phone, hovering in the fuzzy distance, is a social life. If I squint, I can see it. So as Ella bangs away, I tap away.
When I come up for air and Ella has started a tinny “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” for the umpteenth time, I remember something Dr. Alan Mendelsohn — the associate professor in the department of pediatrics and the department of population health at NYU Langone Health — once told me at his office in Bellevue.
Having two children in their early twenties, he warned me of the teen years, when, he said, any chance of dictating how your kids spend their time goes out the window.
“For all behavioral issues, parents’ capacities to deal with tantrums is a bit like a bank,” he explained. “They make investments in their child and then utilize what they’ve built when they need it. From birth to five, parents have a real opportunity to do relationship building, so the child can separate when the time comes, while feeling supported. To the extent that you’ve engaged in relationship building, you can work together to figure out, for example, screen-time limits. It provides you with a foundation.” In other words, put the time in now, and it will compound as they grow. These years are precious — use them wisely.
It’s not that he doesn’t recognize the immense demands put on parents these days. They’re stressed, overworked, under pressure to be integral to their children’s development while constantly being bombarded with conflicting information. The demands escalate rapidly for families in low-income brackets, where making sure food is on the table might be more of a priority than getting on the floor and playing. He assured me that using technology in moderation wouldn’t harm a child and said that a large part of his job is reassuring parents that they’re doing fine and should lay off the self-flagellation. But talking and playing with your kid, in addition to being generally enjoyable company, also pays dividends down the line.
“Everything in moderation is kind of true,” he chuckled. “It’s a scientifically valid statement.”
Which, I assume, applies not just to Ella’s Laugh and Learn puppy but to Magna-Tiles that communicate and paper that talks — and my own damn phone. We may, indeed, be inching ever nearer to a world where magic reigns supreme, where a thin layer of technology is pulsing, invisible, under the surface. Perhaps, in a few years, Ella’s Magna-Tiles will be able, in some unobtrusive way, to gently suggest how she can build a taller castle. But until then, it seems best to go back to basics.
So I power down my own toy and power down Ella’s. My lifeline to the outside world vanishes but I know if my friends are worth their salt, they’ll be there when I tap back in. Plus, Ella and I have a load of laundry to do. And that’s always a blast.
Sophie Brickman is a journalist and the author of Baby, Unplugged (published on September 7th with HarperOne).
