We’ve all been there. The moment it dawns on you that the kid right in front of you as you shout their name, is so caught up in the screen they are looking at that they literally cannot hear you. Believe it or not, this freaky power of the screen is actually sometimes useful. A mom once shared that when her 5 year old was crying in excruciating pain with a broken arm, the first thing the Emergency Room nurse did when they got her into a bed was to switch on the Princess and the Frog. Suddenly, her child calmed down and the pain of her arm bent into the shape of a letter C seemed to be forgotten. If pain neurons can be ignored, what chance do you have?
Using Screen Time to Encourage Kids to Do Real Life Activities
In Anetaland, we are the first to sing the praises of productive screen time (aka games, videos, websites and apps that keep kids engaged, intrigued, questioning, and having fun all while they’re learning). But, we also believe that too much of a good thing can be bad and advocate for kids to have plenty of real life activities too. The problem is, with the entrancing power of screens, it’s a chore for parents and caregivers to tear kids away from digital and get them to want to do real life things. Good thing digital can help cure this ailment it has caused. Here’s how.
Introduce Activities that Combine Irl and Digital
Like a great PB&J sandwich, some activities are best when IRL & digital are combined. The bonus is that once kids start doing these activities urged on by a screen, they eventually may find that they like doing them even without a screen. There are many such activities and you have options for what tickles your particular child’s fancy.
Drawing. You may only be able to make stick figures but several digital resources will work with your child step by step and help them draw. The best part is that kids have to use their hands and real tactile paper!
Dancing. Your moves have to be nothing like Jagger’s but here again there are many resources on the internet that will take kids through age appropriate step by step tutorials that will hopefully help them develop a love for dance.
Crafting. No crafting genes required. This digital led activity is particularly useful because you can get the child to take an interest in reusing items around the house and turning trash into art. The polar bears say thank you.
Yoga. You’ll probably never be a yogi but you kid can get there. There are videos for yoga for every age and the creators take it upon themselves to keep the kids engaged.
Use Screen Time as A Reward for Engaging in Real Life Activities
Just like we use the promise of sugary dessert to encourage the eating of vegetables, screen time can be a reward for real life activities. Humans have evolved to love how sugar makes our bodies feel and it is a well known parenting hack to use dessert to coax kids to eat the more healthful and nutrient-filled foods. If you’ve ever seen kids on screens, you don’t have to be a scientist to guess that there is something in our evolution that makes kids love it so much too. So try the same strategy using screen time as the dessert. Eventually, some kids grow to love the veggies and kids can grow to love the real life activities too.
Help Kids See the Beauty in Balance
Here comes another food analogy. What good will a PB&J be if it was loaded with a cup of peanut butter and a small dollop of jelly? YUCK! Stress to your child how digital and real life activities are both needed in proportion to create extra yumminess. Of course, this analogy falls apart if your kid doesn’t like PB&J or is allergic but you get the point. Replace PB&J with any other pairing that is just better together; macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, bread and butter, bacon and eggs… You get the picture.
If there’s one thing we are learning, it’s that like the way good bacteria can help us fight bad bacteria, technology can offer solutions to the problems that other technology creates.
Ask other parents to send you Anetapacks of the drawing tutorials, dance tutorials and other resources that combine IRL with digital that they have curated. There’s absolutely no need to recreate the wheel and this was precisely what Aneta was built for.
I love the PB&J metaphor…quite apt! The suggestion of adding yoga to kids’ activities is a novel one.