Parents shouldn't use mobiles around their children

[SmudgeButt]

OK I know some will think this is ridiculous. And just for context I'm not saying that parents shouldn't have mobiles but simply not use them when they are out and about with their children.

There's been lots on the news about how schools want to restrict students using mobiles during school hours. But these are kids that have been raised with practically ever adult around them with a mobile glued to their hand.

I've seen parents out pushing buggies with an excited child pointing at flowers or doggies or whatever and the parent is just walking along like a zombie, ignoring the child and simply staring at or talking on their mobile. I've even seen children with buggies or at restaurants that have a tablet, real or plastic, for them to look at and play with rather than engaging with anything else in the world.

Yes I know some children for whatever reason need to have a distraction in order to be in whatever public space. And I know that we all want to have a mobile in case of emergencies or if there's a real need to contact someone.

I guess my issue here is that the other day I was in a restaurant with DH having a breakfast out together and he said, "oh look that woman is talking to her child!" The entire time she and her friend were having their coffee etc they both talked to the child, involved her in the conversation, let her sit quietly for a bit, played with her. Simply engaged with the child as adults would normally but without any IT distractions.

Thoughts?

No it was not normalised. It was seen as crap parenting. I worked with children in the eighties and we talked judgementally about parents who did this.
Social Services still do not intervene on crap parenting. Their threshold is for abuse. Back then you did not even have children in need status for kids who needed extra help. SS really was only for abuse, and they agreed it was crap parenting, but not abuse.

The parents who used to leave kids for hours in cars while they were in the pub, are the parents now propping a tablet up in a buggy.

And good parents have always supervised who their kids played with.

At our pool no, parents are not required to stay. And if I did stay, I would not watch the entire time, no.

I quite often come along to teh last 5 minutes of DD's lesson so I can see what progress she's making. She likes that, I like it, and I get to spend the other 25 minutes drinking coffee. And working usually.

On which note I must actually go back to work. I have spent way too much time on MN today. THAT is my big weakness! Not phone scrolling while withmy children!

Quite. And yet everyone on MN only uses their phone for 5 mins per day, and every kid with a tablet is just a 10 minute snapshot.

It’s pretty much impossible to make someone understand something when they have a vested interest in not understanding it, though.

(I absolutely have a smartphone addiction, but thankfully no kids, so no under-developed brains are being fucked up on my watch.)

• Keep your nose out of other people's business,
• mind your own,
• don't tell people what to do and they won't tell you where to go.

HTH.

If we can put our phones away for certain settings, such as cinema, driving, theatre, not sure why it cant be done in school playgrounds, work calls can be done before and after

The thing that bothers me more than anything about the “Parents [people mean women, let’s face it] shouldn’t be doing X Y Z” is the expectation that parents [women, let’s face it that’s who they mean] are expected to be perfect down to the nanosecond of what they do: how they move, what they say to their kids, what they say to others, the looks on their faces and how they interact with everyone. There is no longer allowances made for being imperfect. There was a thread about a mum who reversed out a lift and was going to answer her phone, she momentarily lost concentration and accidentally bumped backs with someone, apologised but then got a gob of verbal abuse by some bloke over it. She was told by endless posters that she deserved the abuse because “You should ALWAYS look where you’re going”. Which makes me wonder if those posters never had a brain fart or took their eye off the ball or didn’t behave perfectly.

Look at school run threads. Women must:

• Not go on their phones
• speak to everyone to be inclusive
• Speak to no one, even their best friend or sibling, in case it looks cliquey
• Smile at everyone otherwise they’re “shooting dirty looks”
• Not speak to their child lest they be accused of performance parenting
• Speak to their child like an overexcited puppy lest they be accused of neglect

Its just another item in the list of “Parents [let’s face it, women] are Getting It Wrong and I Am A Better Parent Than They Are”.

Sunat45degrees

fair enough and yes coming off too now!!😅

Exactly. Reading this thread, it's breathtaking to observe the chemistry of addiction playing out.
We are all addicted to the dopamine, so posters have a vested interested in doing and saying anything that will not obstruct their dopamine use.

Because using a phone whilst driving is not the same as using it while standing in a playground

This is completely hyperbolic. I would completely include men in this (and in my experience men are often the worst offenders). It’s not difficult to do the school run while mostly avoiding looking at your phone, occasionally chatting to your kid and saying ‘good morning’ to people you know.

The problem is not that you occasionally have to send a work email or book a train, it’s walking down the street looking at TikTok.

I agree with you OP, but as a mother of small children, sometimes pushing a buggy and staring mindlessly at my phone is the only break in the day I get.

Parenting tiny children is relentless, exhausting and usually if my DD is in her pram, then I've reached my limit and need some 'me time'. The rest of the day I'm absolutely present and available for her. But sometimes I need a few minutes for myself.

I wonder though if it could also be projection. I am completely addicted to the dopamine so maybe I assume everyone else is too.

What I would really like to know is if having a "break" on your smartphone is really the same as "having a few minutes to yourself" that we frame it as.
I totally identify with the PPs who say that's why they use it, but I'm wondering if it really is the equivalent of having a cup of tea / having a cigarette in the garden / having a shower / having a quick nap (just thinking of pre-mobile phone versions of "having a few minutes to yourself".
But that I mean does having a smartphone "break" truly calm you down and give you a rest? Or does it, on the contrary, make you feel more anxious, more riled up, in need of more and more?
Are we taking "breaks", or are we finding places to zone out, to dissociate, to escape?

It’s dropping off and picking up. It’s just being annoying and controlling

Surely it depends on what they are using the phone for? Also, it needs to be in context of what else has been going on in the day.
I don't remember spending lots of time scrolling on my phone in the park, but I did used to take a book and read that instead while my children were having a nice time playing. Is that just as bad, or ok because it's a book (positive activity) despite the same level of inattention?

But the point is that when you see a parent for a few minutes, you have no idea whether they're using the phone all the time or just when you are seeing them. And no idea what they're even doing on the phone when you are seeing them.

I guess the challenge is that you can't do many of those traditional 'break' things with a small child involved. God help me if I try and sit down with a cuppa - it's just not happening!

So you don't watch stuff with your kids and share the experience?
We all sit together on a Saturday night and watch the Masked Singer. Watching something together and commenting on a shared program is far from irony.

And I am no helicopter parent! I just enjoy having a laugh with my kids! They're only young for such a short period of time.

I know, I know, I said I was oging back to work...

But this is interesting. I sometimes read on my phone rather than my kindle because I feel like I'll be judged less? I think I feel like if I'm reading people know I am consciously choosing to do that, vs if I'm on my phone maybe they'll think I'm doing something important and/or that I can be easily interrupted vs a book making me seem rude and unavailable?

I have to take DS to his sports matches a good 30 minutes before they start. They do a lengthy warm up etc. If I can, I usually stay in my car and just read for that half an hour, but sometimes that's not an option for whatever reason. So when I go in, I'll maybe read on my phone instead of my kindle becuase I feel like if I'm reading a book people wil think I'm being rude while on my phone other parents could still come talk to me? Obiviously, once the match starts, I'm watching that (felt I needed to clarify that based on this thread!)

I think you are misunderstanding the difference between using a phone and doing dangerous and illegal things

Surely any rule that impacts one group of users will initially be seen as annoying and controlling, like no smoking etc

For mine they would for some reason nod off in front of a screen (I’m the same I can barely get through an episode of the apprentice 😂). I’d be out doing 6 hours of activities, playing, running around often and on the way home when they had that horrible grizzly moment of being tired but struggling to nod off a few minutes of Peppa Pig in the phone worked a treat. I’m sure people did look and judge and hand wrong about bro understanding but pleasing strangers has never been on the top of my priority list.

🤣🤣🤣 dear me I don’t think lack of phone use has helped your intelligence

Some people think murder is fine. Doesn’t make their ridiculousness relevant.

Again, how is this the same? Smoking direcrly impacts the HEALTH of the people standing next to you. Me being on my phone whiel I'm waiting for my kid to come out of school doesn't impact anyone.

Well that’s your opinion, it was normalised and parental judging wasn’t really a thing (not for the better might I add).

As someone who worked in child protection I think it’s correct that social services looks at abuse and not “crap parenting”. The former is well defined, the latter being well defined would seriously limit the freedoms of us all