It’s usually presumed that technology limits are made for kids only. But this is plain wrong. The fact that our kids don’t follow what we say is just because they don’t see us doing it ourselves. Parents think that they are doing a great job at modeling good behavior in their kids, but this isn’t the case. For your kids to listen to you, your actions and words needs to match.
This is very important. Research suggests that our kids tend to model what we do. So if you are smoking but telling your child not to, chances are that your kids will end up smoking too. This is Social Learning Theory. In other words, humans have tendency to repeat what others do around them, especially our kids.
This concept is very important when it comes to families and their use of technology. There is a very interesting research that was conducted by the University of Michigan and University of Washington on 249 child-parent pairs, who were asked about their house rules for the use of technology. They were also asked about the efficacy of those rules. The most important part of the study was where kids were asked what kind of rules that would have chosen for their parents’ use of technology.
These are the results:
Compared to parents who gave 412 rules, the kids provided around 326 rules for their parents. The parents’ rules were somehow easily categorisable, but for the kids, they were quite diverse.
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Listen to me when you are with me
Around 19 percent of the kids said that their parents need to pay attention to what they say. According to them, if their parents are spending time with them, they need not to put their devices away.
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No violation of privacy
It’s a little surprise, because we have been believing that almost every kid wants preservation of their privacy. However, 18 percent of the kids don’t want their parents to post on the social about their grades or talk about their boyfriend/girlfriends without taking their consent. They want that their parents understand their privacy and feelings.
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Give me independence (at least some)
Around 11 percent of the kids don’t want their parents to be helicoptering them. These kids want to make their own decisions and roam around freely without having to give answer to their parents about everything that they do.
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Be moderate
It’s ironic, but our kids also want us to spend less time with our electronic devices. See, how our kids have issues with our use of technology, but we never thought about it. 10 percent of the kids want us to be moderate with our use of technology..
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There is nothing wrong with enforcing rules
Though the figure isn’t high enough, but 7 percent of the kids believe that there is nothing wrong with their parents enforcing rules on them.
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Don’t text while driving
Kids have seen their parents texting while driving and they aren’t happy with this. 6 percent of the kids don’t want their parents to do this either.
Do you want to know what rules parent want to enforce on their kids? Stay tuned for the next issue of this read.
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