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What do You Mean Kids are Addicted to Their iPads and Require Therapy???

April 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I read this article recently: Toddlers become so addicted to iPads they require therapy. I confess that my initial reaction was alarm. Oh no! Are my children addicted to the iPad??! Will I have to fork out thousands of dollars to pay for their therapy because of my faulty parenting choices? Yeah. I panicked. I think every parent does when it comes to their children. We’re afraid when we’re not doing enough and we’re afraid when we’re doing too much. We’re always afraid we’re doing the wrong thing because we’re secretly afraid we are bad parents.

Eventually, rational thought returned and now I find the article laughable. I would have discarded further thought about it from my head except for the fact that I am annoyed by the dramatisation of it all. It’s almost like Aristotle telling me he “almost died” because he was so hungry. In the article, it was stated:

Children as young as four are becoming so addicted to smartphones and iPads that they require psychological treatment…

…Experts have warned that parents who allow babies and toddlers to access tablet computers for several hours a day are in danger of causing “dangerous” long term effects.

The youngest known patient being treated in the UK is a four-year-old girl from the South East.

Her parents enrolled her for compulsive behaviour therapy after she became increasingly “distressed and inconsolable” when the iPad was taken away from her.

Okay, addiction therapy for a toddler? Is this for real? How did a toddler get “addicted” in the first place? Children always want what they desire. It doesn’t have to be a smart device. It can be a toy in a toy shop, a certain snack, a particular book, a TV program… And since they’re just children, isn’t it up to the parents to decide whether their children are allowed to have them or not?

Let’s use an example we’re all familiar with… ice cream (or lolly, or chocolate, or whatever treat it is that your child really loves). My kids ask for it all the time. They love the stuff. When I deny them the chance to have some, you bet they get upset. Especially Hercules. He throws a right old tanty that can be heard half-way across the continent. Yeah, I think he’s addicted to ice cream. I’d better get him an appointment for therapy because this is going to ruin his life if I don’t put a stop to it now.

Oh, but wait… how did he get addicted to ice cream in the first place? What is he, like 3? So surely he couldn’t just pop down to the local supermarket and buy it? Maybe it was because I gave it to him? If I was really concerned that he was eating too much ice cream, shouldn’t I put a stop to it? Like, maybe not buying it for him? Now there’s an idea. We just saved ourselves thousands of dollars on ice cream addiction therapy!

Here’s another example… Bed time. My kids hate going to sleep. They never think they’re tired even when they need toothpicks to keep their eyes open. Knowledgeable adults know something that kids don’t know (or rather won’t acknowledge)  - that children need their rest so they can grow and consolidate what they learned during the day. Sleep is very important so even if they don’t want to sleep, we have to enforce it because we can’t let them stay up all hours until they collapse into a heap from fatigue.

We’re the parents. We should be in control of the access our toddlers have to all things. If we deem it excessive, we stop it or reduce it to a level we are comfortable with. If I were really concerned that my kids were having too much screen time, I just put them in detox. Problem solved. One of the easiest ways to get my kids off a screen is to offer to play with them because they never turn down an offer to play with me. An older child might not think it’s cool but young children love spending time with their parents.

As for the reaction to having the iPad removed… By this definition alone, Hercules is also addicted to the iThing. He gets “distressed and inconsolable” when his devices are taken away from him. But hang on… he’s a toddler. He gets distressed if you take anything away from him – the chess set, his brother’s colour pencils, Daddy’s watch, and I could go on and on. It doesn’t have to be a device. In fact, I’m pretty sure it would be called having a “toddler tantrum”. He gets toddler tantrums all the time – having to shower, getting out of the shower, getting dressed, getting out of the house, waiting for dinner, not being allowed to eat crackers just before dinner time… again, I could go on and on. It a normal part of his development – his increasing desire for autonomy.

“But my daughter is always asking for the iPad…” Of course she is. It’s fun to play with. Hercules is constantly asking to play with the iPad. He is also constantly asking me to let him paint, or to let him play with play doh, or to watch a specific program on TV, or to listen to his Signing Time songs – whatever happens to be his biggest fancy at the time. In school, he’s always asking his teachers to let him “play sandcastles” in the sand pit.

If you give your child real choices, he will choose the thing the wants most. It won’t necessarily be the iPad. If I offer Hercules the chance to play at a jungle gym, he will happily discard his iPad. If I offer Aristotle a book he’s been hankering to read, he will also drop the iPad.

So if you ask me what I think about toddlers being addicted to smart devices, I think it’s a whole lot of hogwash.


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Filed Under: Activities, Discussion, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

Travelling: Flying on an Aeroplane with an Active Child

August 3, 2012 by 6 Comments

Aristotle and I have flown on a plane a total of 9 times since he was born. Every single time, he’s been wonderful. He sits down and keeps busy with whatever he has in front of him. Other passengers comment on how pleasant it was to fly with him.

Hercules and I have flown on a plane three times. The first two flights, he was under 2. He slept for most of it and we were sitting in the front row. He hadn’t really discovered his vocal chords yet and he was still fairly easily distracted by a TV screen. The third time was recently and suffice to say that no one complimented us on how delightful it was to fly with us.

What happened?

I was armed to the teeth with distractions but it wasn’t enough. Hercules sat in his seat like there were ants in his pants. I could barely keep his belt on during turbulence (which was most of the flight), I struggled to shush him from errupting into wild laughter and delighted squeals in between his vibrant greetings to his grandfather who sat two rows away. He gave the man in the seat in front of him a back massage with his frequent kicking of the chair back. He bounced up and down in his chair like he was on a trampoline – much to the annoyance of the man who sat beside him.

I finally truly understand how hard it is for parents who have children with the “moving” bug. Until Hercules, I have never had to deal with a child like this and I confess it – he was out of my control. I did my best to distract him – the iPad, the games, the TV shows on the plane, stuffing him silly with food, and the boob. They helped a little but not enough. We did have a full hour of respite when he napped – pity he didn’t sleep longer.

When we finally got off the plane, he was like a kid high on speed. The times I contained him in the baby carrier to stop him from chasing his brother, he was swinging his body wildly from side to side while he sang, squealed, shouted at the top of his voice. When I shushed him, he would play high 5 with my face and neck then arch his back so he could view the world upside-down. If I got too near anything that was “grabbable”, he would grab it or kick it. He ignored all my requests to stop it. When I raised my voice, he would burst into a shrill wail that was probably more disturbing to the peace than any of his singing or shouting.

I know it’s annoying when you’re a passenger having to put up with children like Hercules on your flight. I was one of those passengers once. Being on the other side of the fence has given me a whole new level of respect for the parents who dealt with children like Hercules. Now that I am a parent of a child like this, I finally get it. Some children have a need for movement and when they are couped up in an aeroplane for 7.5 hours, it’s hard to sit quietly in a seat with your belt on – especially when you’re 2.5 years old.

I offer my sincerest apologies to the passengers who have to put up with us. I also appreciate that they were all understanding enough to put up with us without snarling at me for my child’s disruptive behaviour. I really did my best to minimise the annoyance.

Do you have an active child who can’t sit stilll for long? How do you manage long haul flights? Perhaps we can all share some tips. Since I have another flight coming up, I could really use some right now.


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Discipline: Understanding Behaviour Motivation from a Child’s Point of View

January 17, 2012 by 3 Comments

They say that every child is different; every child is unique in their own ways. Even two siblings can be like day and night. Aristotle and Hercules are two such siblings. So different in nature that you could be forgiven for thinking they weren’t brothers – if it weren’t for the fact that they bear the same familial resemblance. Having two children with such different natures has been a blessing and a trial.

It has been a blessing because I get to enjoy motherhood in a completely different way. It has been a trial because I do not know how to discipline Hercules. He does not take me seriously and he does not look to me as an authority. While he fears his father’s stern voice, he laughs at my reprimands. While I’ve always been able to get through to Aristotle, it seemed that I was at a loss when it came to Hercules. In a fit of desperation, I found myself pondering corporal punishment despite my stand against it. And then I thought about it further and spotted the irony of smacking a child for smacking his brother. What kind of mixed message would that be sending my son? It’s okay that Mummy smacks him but not when he smacks his brother?

The epiphany came through a few days ago while I watched Hercules playing by himself. But before I get to it, let me set the background. Aristotle was an easy toddler in the sense that he never bit anyone; he didn’t really hit people either; and he didn’t throw his toys around. Hercules, on the other hand, is a biter, a hitter and a thrower. It was confounding. In most cases, children learn by watching other children, but that would mean that either an older sibling was doing it, or he was learning it from the other children at school. Since Hercules does not go to school and his older brother does not do such things, where did he learn these terrible habits?

From his environment. Understandings that we take for granted were being missed by his lack of experience. A friend of mine gave this wonderful example a long time ago. We encourage our children to throw the ball, but we get upset when they throw the orange (fruit). For a young child, this can be confusing. What’s the difference between a ball and an orange? Both are round. A young child lacks the experience to realise that we don’t throw our food but it is okay to throw a ball. Extrapolate this example further and it isn’t hard to understand how Hercules got into the habit of throwing his toys. A child might think: if a ball is a toy and I can throw balls, then I can throw other toys, too.

Back to my epiphany… One afternoon, I was listening to Hercules playing with the wooden train set. He was taking the pieces of the railway tracks and crashing them together as he usually did. It always frustrates me to see him play so roughly with his toys because he’s already broken so many. That afternoon, I also heard the sound effects he was making with his voice. He was mimicking the sound effects his brother makes when we play our homemade version of the physical Angry Birds game. He had learned to crash his toys because we did it with the blocks. And I, being the initiator of that game, had only myself to blame for inadvertently teaching my toddler that smashing toys was okay and even fun!

Now that I could see the connection, the rest became clearer. He would bite us in return because we used to pretend to eat his fingers with mock biting. It was a game he really enjoyed so he must have thought we would enjoy it as much if he bit us back. Instead, we responded with anger and reprimands that I’m sure were just as confusing for him. As for the slapping, he must have witnessed our mock fights with pretend punches. Games we played thoughtlessly with an unspoken understanding of the boundaries were observed and misunderstood by my toddler.

Even though I have repeatedly told him to stop, there are times when he still does it – not because he is trying to be disobedient but because children are forgetful especially when they are having fun – they forget the rules because they get carried away. Even adults are prone to such mistakes when we are too wrapped up in the moment.

So the only way to stop it is to play the broken record and tell him why we don’t do these things and to stop playing these games (at least until he is old enough to understand the limits to such games). I’ve noticed that the biting has reduced considerably already so perhaps it is just a matter of time before he fixes the rule in his head that dropping alarm clocks on his brother’s head is a “no-no”.

What I’ve learned from this experience is that it is easy to label a child as mischievous and naughty without attempting to understand him. While it is important to teach our children what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviours, being able to see things from their perspective helps us to be fair and more understanding.


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Filed Under: Discipline Tagged With: ,
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