Has the smartphone hijacked parents? This concept hit me at the premiere of Puffin Rock And The New Friends last Sunday.
My girls got chatting to the voice of the cute animation, Chris O’Dowd.
He’s a big kid himself. The 43-year-old got down on his knees on the blue carpet at the Odeon cinema and spent ages showing Erin and Eila the little characters on the posters.
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He asked them if they go to the movies much, to which Eila replied: “We went to Teenage
Crackhead yesterday.” Bent over hysterical laughing,
Chris said: “Is that ‘Teenage Kracken’ you mean, love?” It was an exceptional weekend for us, two premieres, two movie theatres, how lucky were we?
On the way home I asked the girls their thoughts on which movie they preferred on our weekend of fun.
Erin, six, said: “They were both the best mammy, you weren’t on your phone watching it with us.”
She hit the nail on the head and the mammy guilt ate me up. I've unwittingly developed a habit of "multi-screening", splitting my focus between two screens, hence dividing my attention.
The irony being, I went on Ireland AM the next day to chat about whether our phone usage is affecting our kids.
Neurological development therapist Ollywn Moran was the expert sitting with me on the couch. I was there to represent the voice of the mammies.
She was a rock of sense and the research she was imparting was nothing short of alarming. Ollywn told how our kids are wired to mimic us.
I often see my four-year-old swiping a magazine, which now makes sense. Parents are regularly so absorbed in their phones, they don't hear their kids calling them, which leads to tantrums.
We've all witnessed this. Ollywn explained we have "old brains for a new world".
The brain development in our children hasn't changed but the world we live in has.
Our babies and kids feed off us, we're wired to connect with them and help them develop, but if we are connected to the phone 24/7 and not them, what's that doing to their brains?
The most alarming thing I learnt was that our obsession with phones is a neurological experiment where we won't see the results for 20 years.
Needless to say, I went home from Virgin Media and began a screen detox. It lasted for all of one day.
A meltdown ensued and the phone was back to bribe the girls with YouTube before fighting kicked off again.
We don't allow kids to be bored anymore. Paradoxically, teens are now rebelling against the smart phone and going old school, there's now a renaissance of the "dumb phone".
Maybe we haven't damaged our kids to the point of no return.
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