Now Is the Right Time!
As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship and ensure your child develops a healthy relationship with technology. After all, technology is simply a set of tools that can serve the beneficial purposes of entertaining, educating, creating, connecting to others, and making life easier.
The World Health Organization recommends for two-year-olds, the following:1
- Spend at least 180 minutes (or three hours) per day physically active (more is better);
- They may not be restrained for more than an hour (in a high chair, stroller, or sitting in front of the television or a device).
- When sedentary, the WHO encourages reading together or storytelling instead of using devices. Screen time is not recommended.
- Get 11-14 hours of quality sleep, including naps with consistent bedtime and wake-up times.
Two-year-olds are learning about their identities as separate individuals with bodies, minds, and feelings. Additionally, they’ll experiment with and learn social skills through play, sometimes alongside (and on their own) and sometimes in cooperation with peers. Their extensive capacity for imagination and pretend play is a hallmark of this age group. Still, it also means they will have a more challenging time distinguishing between fantasy and reality. They will mimic actions they see, especially in older children and adults, to learn how to act themselves. They are growing socially, emotionally, cognitively, and linguistically at a highly rapid pace. This age group develops their brain connectivity more these years than at any other time. 0-3 year olds are making one million neural connections per second!2
Technology is highly entertaining and stimulating for children, so it can become a source of conflict and make it difficult to separate an infant from a device. Young children, whose brains are shaping their architecture through relationships, play, and experiences in the first three years of their lives, require interaction with others and play to develop in healthy ways.
The World Health Organization notes that a significant risk factor for children’s healthy development and well-being is being sedentary longer than necessary—not getting enough physical movement and exercise and not getting enough sleep due to technology use.
We know that growing a healthy relationship with technology requires regular conversations among caregivers and a commitment from the whole family to become intentional about their use of technology, including appropriate boundaries and safety practices. While it may take a bit more time, planning, and encouragement with your young child to develop a healthy relationship with technology, its role can become a joyful experience when they are ready for it, enrich your family life, and promote valuable skills for school and life success. It can also prepare your child for a lifetime of wise habits related to technology tools. The steps below include specific, practical strategies and effective conversation starters to support families.
Why Examine Technology Use?
Becoming intentional about your child’s daily technology use can influence how they develop a healthy relationship with technology and its role in their lives. Looking for ways to experience and learn together about how to use devices wisely contributes to your child’s development.
Today, in the short term, creating a healthy relationship with technology can create
- more significant opportunities for connection and enjoyment
- opportunity for dialogue and reflection among caregivers
- a direct way to influence your child’s positive and healthy development
Tomorrow, in the long term, a healthy relationship with technology helps your child build skills in:
- self-management and self-discipline
- planning and time management
- collaboration and cooperative goal-setting
- create positive device habits that contribute directly to school and life success
Five Steps for Examining Technology Use
This five-step process helps your family establish a discipline for technology use. You can revisit it as your child grows and changes. It also builds essential skills in your young child. The same process can also be used to address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).
Tip: These steps are done best when you and your child are not tired or in a rush.
Because of the above-mentioned risks to your child’s development, we encourage you to minimize your child’s use of devices and maximize their other activities, such as play, interaction with others, walks and time outside, and other explorations of your child’s environment, in addition to napping and meals. Instead of considering daily use, you may consider no use, rare occasional use, or weekly use.
Step 1 Get Your Child Thinking by Getting Their Input
You can take cues from your child when they have had enough screen time.
When observing your young child, you will look for:
- turning their head away from the screen, even in short bouts, indicates they are finished
- rubbing their eyes means they are tired or overstimulated
- over-excitement can also mean they are overstimulated
And after using a device, you can begin to build emotional awareness by asking:
- How do you feel? (Since your young child is still developing a feelings vocabulary, one way to help them learn to label their feelings is to offer what you observe in brief, simple terms and ask if you are right. “You seem happy. Or you seem frustrated. Is that right?”)
Trap: Do not leave your child alone with a screen or device. It’s far too easy to lose track of time, and they will not get the nourishment they require off screens.
Trap: Do not use a device as entertainment while waiting for a seat at a restaurant, in line at the post office, or any of your daily activities. This is a tough habit to break in the long term. More importantly, your young child misses the opportunity to build self-management skills by waiting and the chance to make critical social skills by interacting with others in your community.
As a parent or someone in a parenting role, learning about what
developmental milestones your child is working on can help you know which aspects might be more difficult for your child when it comes to technology use.
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- Two-year-olds are aware of their separateness from others. This awareness can lead to testing boundaries as they attempt to assert themselves and exert control.
- Two-year-olds are interested in demonstrating independence, like climbing stairs, onto furniture, or finding hidden objects, but often require support. This can lead to frustrations as they cannot act independently.
- Two-year-olds mimic those around them to learn how to behave. These also are early seeds of empathy, feeling another’s feelings.
- Two-year-olds are excited to interact with other children.
- Two-year-olds may show separation anxiety as they cope with increasing independence but also realize how dependent they are.
- Two-year-olds may only communicate single words and simple phrases, so they may become upset and throw tantrums to express their anger or frustration.
Trap: Screen time should never replace solo playtime and playtime with friends and family. Young children learn through unstructured play! Exposure to nature, exercise, play, and social interaction are all key factors in your child’s healthy development. Your rules and routines can safeguard time for these.
Actions
Model healthy technology habits.
- Because technology plays a significant role in family life, modeling how you use technology teaches young children more than your words ever could.
- Think about the following questions: How are you disciplined about technology? Do you have rules for putting the laptop down and working away at the end of the day? Do you have times when you turn off or leave behind your phone? Share those practices with your child so that they understand that it’s not only children who have to manage devices and cultivate healthy technology habits.
- Be sure that when you share the focus with your young child on whatever draws them to you, one is put away, and notifications are turned off so that those distractions do not tempt you. Your focus will help build the critical executive function skill of focusing on your young child.
- Notice how you cope with challenges and uncomfortable feelings. Do you tend to use technology as an “escape”? Reflect and decide on ways in which you are going to calm down rather than tune out.
Focus screen time on connecting with loved ones.
- Because screen or device time should be minimized at this time of life, use your device time to connect on-screen with loved ones you cannot see in person. This time will continue to stimulate your young child.
Tip: When not using technology, sharing the focus of your child’s imaginative play can create opportunities to grow your trust and intimacy while helping your child develop valuable social and emotional skills and enhance brain development.
Trap: Not all media is trustworthy! Young children should not be given devices to scroll through a wide range of videos because the content they might inadvertently encounter is far from age-appropriate. Be selective about your young child’s viewing.
Step 3 Practice to Grow Skills and Develop Habits
Your daily routines are opportunities for your child to practice vital new skills. With practice, your child will improve over time as you give them the chance with support. Practice grows vital new brain connections that strengthen (and eventually form habits) each time your child works hard toward a goal or demonstrates belief in themself.
The practice also provides valuable opportunities to grow self-efficacy—a child’s sense that they can do a task successfully. This leads to confidence. It helps them understand that mistakes and failures are part of learning.
Actions
- Use “Show me…” statements with a positive tone and body language to express excitement and curiosity. If you connect with a loved one on a device, have your child shut it down or hand it back when you are finished. You might say, “Show me you hand the device back when our time is up.”
- Set an alarm like a kitchen timer when on a device and around your child. Be sure to put the device away when the timer goes off. They will learn from your modeling how to manage devices for a designated time frame.
- Recognize effort using “I notice…” statements like, “I notice how you powered down when we ended our call. That’s smart!”
Step 4 Support Your Child’s Development and Success
At this point, you’ve engaged in various activities to help your child develop a healthy relationship with technology through plenty of practice managing their time and the content they view. This practice allows for learning and growing.
Now, you can offer continued positive support. This support encourages your child and keeps them focused on proactively managing their healthy relationship with technology.
Actions
- Promote your child’s healthy development. Sing songs while waiting in line or play games like “I Spy” instead of using devices to fill the time.
- Notice and observe your child and their feelings as a guide. You might notice your child feeling more anxious, angry, or frustrated after time on a device. You might then say, “It seems like you are feeling _______, is that right? Why do you think that is?” Be sure you reflect and learn from that indicator that it’s too much, and allow your child plenty of time to spend on play, sleep, and other critical activities.
- Stay engaged. If your young child is using a device, be sure you are nearby to help select what to view and reflect on what is being viewed to help them make meaning of it.
No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.
If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.
There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.
Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You put the device down after your allowed screen time—I love seeing that!” Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment such as a smile, high five, or hug.
Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job. A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect, like “If you behave in the store, you will get a treat on the drive home.” (If you XX, then I’ll XX.) It stops any negotiations in the heat of the moment. A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.
Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.
Trap: It can be easy to resort to bribes when recognition and occasional rewards are underutilized. If parents or those in a parenting role frequently resort to bribes, it is likely time to revisit the
five-step process.
Trap: Think about what behavior a bribe may unintentionally reinforce. For example, offering a sucker if a child stops a tantrum in the grocery store checkout line may teach the child that future tantrums lead to additional treats.
Actions
- Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything moves smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice.
- Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the whole bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
- Build celebrations into your routine. For example, snuggle and read before bed after getting through your bedtime routine.
Closing
Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.
