Taming Tech: Tip #7

TIP #7: DELAY WHEN POSSIBLE

When it comes to parenting children, it’s easier to keep the door closed to certain media and technology for a longer period of time than it is to shut the door once you’ve opened it.

It’s especially pertinent when it comes to smartphones and is especially helpful with young children. Granted, the more they are around other kids their age who do not have the same guidance, the more challenging your parenting becomes.

Just because it is challenging doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. I taught my children that other families have different standards when it comes to media and technologies.

Each family has the freedom to set those standards. Those standards might be good, better, or best, or they might be poor, careless, or reckless. As a family we are not obligated to conform to another family’s standards or lack of standards.

I taught my children that there are families with stricter standards than our own, and asked them if they wanted me to adjust in that direction? They didn’t.

I also reminded them that are families with more lenient standards also. They are not setting the bar for our household.

This became a platform to teach my children that we were not going to look down on people who had stricter standards, nor judge those who had lesser standards. We must function as an autonomous household.

I can learn from other experienced parents, but at the end of the day, I am accountable to God for guiding my family.