Distracted Parenting

We have all been warned of the dangers of distracted driving which usually includes the use of a cell phone while talking or texting, but I am now expanding the category of dangerous cell phone use to distracted parenting.  A recent post on Facebook has garnered over a million shares and thousands of comments.  It shows a sign outside a Texas daycare telling parents to "Get off your phone" during pickup and pay attention to your kids.  While this post has received mixed commentary from parents online - some applaud the concept, others resent the mommy shaming - I believe the intent of the sign has a remarkable amount of validity in our hyper-connected lifestyles.  I personally have witnessed parents doing this exact thing at my daughter's pre-school - ignoring their kids while talking or texting.  As a side note, over half of the parents I see at pick-up where we live are Dads, so the idea that this post was mommy shaming is a little presumptuous.  In my personal life, the post is actually very timely to something my wife and I decided over the past weekend.

I will be the first to admit that I am mildly addicted to social media and news websites.  I find the greater context of the world around me fascinating and, for better or worse, usually can't get enough from these sites. With kids, however, my time to consume online content is considerably more restricted and the internal struggle I have begun to notice is real, especially with so much political discussion.  As a result I personally have found myself ignoring my kids while looking at my phone or asking them to repeat something they said or did because I missed it.  Until recently I didn't realize the effect my "habit" was having on my kids.  My 9 month old tries desperately to grab my phone any chance he gets, more so than any other object, probably because he knows it is important to me so he wants to have it too.  My daughter, who is almost 3, wants YouTube or Netflix on the phone whenever she has a chance.  These acts in themselves are most likely benign and I have no reason to believe I am creating a monster in either of my children but what it does say is that I am missing out on time spent focusing on them, time that I will never get back, time that I imagine I will regret later in life.

My wife has been nice about it, but she reminds me from time to time that I need to put the phone down and focus on the kids more.  I am grateful for her example because she is right - but don't tell her I said that.  As a result, I decided to make a change in our house and take time for our family by purposely disconnecting a little each day.  Our decision was to go back to the world we grew up in. A world where one phone number was the way we connected between homes, a world where technology was a convenience and not a burden, a world where we actually talked to each other instead of texting.  We decided to get a third cell phone line on our plan (which is extremely cheap) and put a simple flip phone in the kitchen as our "home" phone.  Each night we now come home, turn off the iPhones and rid ourselves of the temptation to react with each passing buzz, beep or ring.

The act of turning off that phone between getting home and the next morning is amazing.  I no longer feel anxiety about whether I missed out on an interesting share on Facebook, or possibly missed some "Breaking News," which lets be honest, the threshold for news that is breaking has really gotten low nowadays...

I now feel more connected by being less connected, I now feel like I can really relax and most importantly, I now feel like I am present in the lives of my kids.  If you need me I am now reachable when I want to be reached - unless, of course, you know my new home number.

"Get off your phone" sign at a pre-school in Texas