by Terungwa Akaahan

Created on: July 20, 2010

The easiest way that comes in handy whenever phones, control and children are the subject of any discuss is the ‘authoritative parenting style’ to wit, restricting phone usage or altogether ‘revoking the license’ to use the phone. But are these measures the best in the present century where our children seemingly know more than us or just a handy, yet faulty alternative?

For most children, restricting phone usage only produces one of two things (or all two combined): resentment towards the parents and a nonchalant attitude towards all else. But we do not want our children to bear unnecessary grudges against us (so far as it can be avoided) and harbour a nonchalant attitude on everything else so far as lies in our power. Receiving the phone from him or her would only accelerate the ill effects mentioned above. What then is the way out?

Getting your child to talk on the phone less is an enterprise that should really begin in the formative years of the child in question and not when he has actually started misusing his/her time on the phone. Engaging a child in a lifetime endeavour at an extremely early age has the advantage of diverting his mind from the more trivial things of life like unnecessary phone calls his peers find difficult to resist. Call this ‘adult programming’ and you would not be far from the gospel truth. Notable (and successful) examples of this enterprise include: Robert Kiyosaki (best selling author and millionaire) who in his teens was more keen on making money than the trivialities of youth; Tiger Woods (currently the no. 1 golfer in the world) was already playing at age 3 and by 10, his whole soul was consumed by golf; John Stuart Mill (an economist par excellence) who by 12 years of age was solving higher mathematics, had read the classics and was intellectually advanced even by today’s standards… the lesson: programme your child’s brain immediately it can accommodate what it was endowed with or that which you feel (objectively) that your child is good (and will excel at). This way, unnecessary frivolities like unnecessary phone calls would not get a chance. But what if you did not know that a child could be programmed at childhood or you simply did not give it a thought?

Simple. Apportion more responsibility to your child whether it be chores or simply making sure that no fly get past the living room door! This way, your child is sure to get busy and think less about his cell phone or the general one the family shares. But in apportioning more responsibility to him/her, be sure that you allot to him tasks that are particularly ENGAGING and THOSE HE/SHE LIKES WITH PASSION. Getting this combination may not be the easiest of tasks, but the results, sure, justify the pain. Needless to say, no pain would exist if you really know whom you gave the breathe of life to. If you do not, what is stopping you?

If all fails, engage your child in a frank heart-to-heart talk about your fears about his phone habits (children’s understanding surpasses the stereotype limit we adults place for them!). But by no means use force or the ‘authoritative parenting style’, for you would sure meet rebuff straight away or silent resentment.    

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