In this age of instant and available communication with most anybody we know available with a few taps, the world isn’t an oyster, it’s a cell phone.

Think for a moment.  What do you do when:

 

• you are caught behind someone in a grocery line who needs a price check that is taking, like, forever
• you’re watching your child’s basketball game and it is half time
• it’s a commercial on TV and the show is a cliff hanger from last week, and so you are actually watching it as it is broadcast, and so you can’t fast forward through commercials
• you’re in a restaurant waiting for your meal after you’ve ordered and the food hasn’t come yet
• you’re stuck at a train crossing

If you’re honest, and you are like most people, you will answer that you check your phone.  It’s become a bit of a nation wide automatic reflex to take any break in life’s action to check one’s phone.

 

The challenge for us is that having all that communication ability at hand seemingly imposes on us this invisible obligation to use it.

The pull to be using technology is so significant that many are not just taking a look at it in the in-between the moments of life, or during the course of the work day.

There is an increasingly dangerous trend to use technology to replace moments of our lives that are happening right in front of us.

We lose what is significant and meaningful in our lives while we catch up on what is meaningful in other’s lives distantly on Facebook or Twitter.

A recent preliminary study in the Boston area looked at 55 parents with children under 10 in fast food restaurants.

• 40 out of 55 parents used their cellphone at some point during the meal

• 16 out of 55 parents used their cellphone consistently throughout the entire meal.

• that means that 29% of the children in this sample study essentially ate their meal alone, and 72% of these children saw time with a cell phone trump being with them.

 

YIKES!!

Given how significant mealtimes are to engage children in meaningful conversation, this is striking.  Mealtimes serve to:

 

• teach children about how to listen, turn take, ask questions, paraphrase, and generally converse in a warm and loving way
• have children hear their stories valued, bounce their stories off of others to hear of other alternative interpretations and actions
• one of the ways we develop memories is to tell the story of an experience to develop “episodic memory”…it turns the experience into a story…and how the story is heard by others changes the story (e.g. “It sounds like you were so brave to ask to play in that game during recess.” or “That was mean for that boy to say that to you.  No wonder it hurt.”)

Mealtimes are, quite simply, a very natural and normal opportunity to be with each other…unless the phone is out.

Distracted parenting takes us, as parents, away from truly seeing our children.

 

• We absently nod and smile when they say something, but may not really be listening.
• Our child asks us to help with something and we say, “One minute” and it turns into 10 or 30 or never.
• Our child calls for attention, and we brush them off.
• The bid for connection that follows this brush off gets further blown off

 

And the child misses out on being valued and heard.  They miss out on engaging with the most important people in their lives–their parents.

And parents miss out on the moments of ordinary in their child’s lives that sparkle with wonder.  Parents lose out too..with distracted parenting.

We can be so busy looking at the latest viral video that we can miss the little one in front of us taking a brave step to tell us he was bullied at school.

We can be so busy looking at the instagram of a faraway friend’s meal that we miss spending our meal with the little ones in front of us.

You can’t plan joy. It bubbles up amongst the countless interactions during the day. It happens during those moments where you and your child dial into each other and share a moment that brings a twinkle to your eyes. And if parents are present, both parents and children are robbed of those moments.

It means being awake to your life.

Undistracted. Present. Mindful.

It means noticing when your child offers you a bid for connecting by catching your eye before telling a story, trying to play a little trick on you, or a hand on the knee.  It means finding moments to offer bids of connection to your child, knowing that not all will be accepted, but some will be caught, and a few will blossom into a memory you smile about as you fall asleep.

Yes, parenting is an endless list of exhausting tasks:  wake the kids, dress the kids, feed the kids, wipe the table, clean the kitchen, tidy the mess, interrupt the fight, dry the tears…and it’s only 9 am and it already feels too much! The temptation to plus into the perfect world of Pinterest is a strong pull in the middle of this messy stressful life.  To escape into the cuteness of YouTube seems almost irresistible.

The phone is a place to escape the realities of the mundane, tedious, exhausting presence of children who ask unlimited questions, ask for help often, and whine and cry in the middle of it, despite your best efforts.  Phones listen to your taps so painlessly in comparison. Distracted parenting can sometimes seems like a survival tool in this world of parenting. But think of what is lost with distracted parenting:

• The choice to tell you a private secret of a struggle comes after the child’s internal safety meter has had hours to rise after reading books together, making a snowman, and cleaning up the glass of spilled milk together.

• The deep disclosures that a parent treasures eternally, get whispered in the dark of a private fort you have built together.

• The soft “I love you’s” and spontaneous hugs happen in those “in-between moments” that often get stolen by glancing at technology.

 

NOTE: Children need connection.  They will work to have negative attention in the absence of no attention. Many times a child would rather be scolded than be ignored. As they seek to engage you and feel ignored/dismissed, they will increase the volume of the “bids for connection”–that’s often what’s happening when a child is misbehaving or fighting with a sibling.

The ever-present cell phone can tempt us from authentic connection.  I’m inviting you to disconnect from it to reconnect to the life right in front of you.

• To put down the phone to pick up the connection with your children, your partner, your co-workers, even the strangers on the bus

• To switch off the signal of the internet to be available to the signals of the folks around you…the subtle signals–the turn of the head, or the downcast eyes, or the quick shy smile that suggests something much larger if noticed and highlighted

• To disengage from people across the world to re-engage with the wee ones who positively bloom under the attentive gaze of their caregivers.

 

It’s not just not pulling out the phone…what I’m finding is that having the technology around means that often, even when I’m not using it, I’m still thinking about it. There are times when I have to make a conscious choice a dozen times during a Junior Tribe Member’s game to not check it.  I’m still distracted as I am aware of it in my pocket and with my decision to not tend to it. 

To reduce the distraction of the cell phone in your life may need more than simply deciding to pull it out less frequently…as the choice to not pull it out it itself a distraction.  Can you develop a discipline of going tech free in your household?

 

• During the dinner hour…no cell phones in the room
• Between dinner and the children’s bedtime
• From wakeup until the children are off to school
• Leave it in another room during the bedtime routine

 

With Spring Break coming up, there is ample opportunity to declare tech free days, or even a tech free hour. Remember how a toddler often appreciates the box the present came in more than the present itself?  They are alive to possibility of fun…the simple moments of life are the ones that are often the most memorable ones.

Some tech free ideas for Spring Break:

 

• A roll of duct tape and every blanket/sheet in the house…plop them in the middle of the living room and declare the need to construct a fort for the picnic that will be held there over the supper hour, or the sleepover for the entire household. (You may feel your back the next day, but I can guarantee you that your children will remember this for years!)
• Create a new fabulous and fun annual celebration/holiday for your family that you will create together…you may have to decide a flag, or colours, or decorations, or the dinner menu that will reflect “National Yellow Sock Day” or “Macaroni’n’Cheese Day” or “Grandparent’s Day”.  Spend the day with the children prepping for the day with your help, and then celebrating the unique celebration that you’ve created in the evening with the family (with guests, if you choose)
• Make a list of locations that you haven’t yet had a chance to check out locally and do the “staycation” thing…a local museum or park that you haven’t seen, the conservatory.  Check out the local papers and find out what’s happening.
• Mall hunt: take the kids and put them in team…and take along enough adults to supervise each group. Create a list of things to collect around the mall.  Kids love to go hunting for the “treasure” of a lost nickel, or a purple dress in a show window, a toothpick, and bring back the special scent from a perfume counter.

Spend the time with your children with your phone placed in another room, “off” if possible.  If going all day without technology is too hard for the person who checks in constantly (or logistically impossible), allow yourself to check it only periodically during predetermined intervals.

 

To put down the cell phone for hands free parenting is a gift your children will benefit from years to come. It won’t be easy, it will take some practiced discipline and establishment of new habits…real work.  But worthwhile things in life rarely come easy.