Taming Tech: Tip #9

TIP #9: BE A GOOD ROLE MODEL

When it comes to taming tech, one of the biggest hills to climb is to become a good role model for your children. They need help navigating the digital age and you have the potential to be the best person to provide that guidance. Have you considered how much of their behavior reflects your own?

Young children and teens collect important cues about life through watching dad and mom. They may not consciously be thinking about mimicking your actions, but they pick things up for good or bad along the way. You are probably aware of the classic parenting proverb, “More is caught than taught.”

It’s easy to get frustrated with the way our children interact with smartphones or other devices used for entertainment or media consumption, but are we ready to make needed changes in our own lives before we try to help our teens make needed changes in their lives?

Jesus gave a simple parable about taking the log out of your own eye before trying to take the speck out of a brother’s eye. In this case, we have a culture of parents who are blinded by the attraction of smartphones, and we are seemingly not capable of making good judgments for ourselves much less be in a good place to help someone else with their problems.

You may be fully aware of your own bad habits, and you don’t want to be a hypocrite to your children, so you don’t address it in their lives. I’m all for keeping hypocrisy out of parenting as much as possible but continuing the current course without making any corrections because you don’t want to be a hypocrite is not the highest virtue of parenting. The better path is to get things in order in your life so that you can first be a good example to your children.

They really need you to be a mentor but effective mentoring requires you to model the right behavior first.