Chip Chick
“We found that the three components of mother-child interaction were reduced by a factor of two to four relative to uninterrupted, free play, both when the mother was reading printed magazines and browsing on her smartphone,” says Dr. Katy Borodkin of the Department of Communication Disorders, University of Tel Aviv.
“In other words, the mothers talked up to four times less with their children while they were on their smartphone. Moreover, they exchanged fewer conversational turns with the toddler, provided less immediate and content-tailored responses, and more often ignored explicit child bids. Even when they were able to respond while browsing Facebook, the quality of the response was reduced—the mothers kept their responsiveness to a bare minimum to avoid a complete breakdown in communication with the toddler.”
The benefits of being “present” with your small children are immense. Your verbal and physical interactions with your child help develop your child’s language skills, vocabulary, social and emotional communication skills, and almost every other aspect of child development: linguistic, social, emotional, and cognitive.
Put down the smartphone and magazine. Although I’m no doctor or psychologist, I’m sure photos of your high school friend’s kids are not as important as spending that time talking to your kid. Yes, you need “me” time.
You need to have some “self-care” which, can be scrolling or posting online. Just don’t let it overshadow the care and amount of time you give your kid.
And dads, don’t think you’re off the hook. Studies show that fathers use their cell phones just as much as mothers.
So you can reasonably deduce the study findings for dads would be the same as moms. Either way, stop looking at Facebook Marketplace when you’re playing with the kids. They deserve your attention.
