Left Photo: No screens, TVs, cell phones or lap-tops should be in sight, or within hearing, while the newborn is awake. We must get back to face to face talking; to each other, and to our children.
Yes, even while feeding your newborn; talk to her/him, sing nursery rhymes; if it’s the midnight or 4am feed, talking and singing helps you stay awake too, while promoting bonding, and laying the essential building blocks of literacy learning later in her/his development.
Turn off your phone, laptop and TV when your baby is not sleeping. Your child is the most important person in your lives now. Not the all-invasive cell phone or its near relative, the laptop, and more distant cousin, the TV. Turn them off. Put your cell phone in a drawer, and do not to be tempted to answer it.
Remember from birth to age two, 70% of neural connections are formed. Learning, bonding and attachment occurs. Children must interact, socialise and play, … Repetition consolidates learnings.
Your tone of voice and the smile on your face says it all at this stage. They may not understand the words but will understand the intent and recognize your unconditional love. The oxytocin levels will rise in both; transmitted via the eyes and felt by the heart, deep inside. So please engage eye to eye and hold their attention.
A baby’s brain gathers data to shape the architecture of their brain.
If you are looking at your screen, if you are not talking to him/her face to face, then the neural connections for healthy development are not being formed.
Parents are a child’s first teachers. No teaching is happening if you are on a cell phone or laptop…or if you are using the TV as a babysitting service. In fact, the reverse, your attitude says it all - NOT INTERESTED!
Touch is essential for brain development (this is especially critical in the first two weeks).
Unconditional love and frequent interactions are imperative. Cuddle and rock your baby, sing nursery rhymes, talk nonsense, but whatever, engage with them via their eyes.
The more you nurture, cuddle, interact, smile, talk, and sing to your baby, face to face, the better. Relationships develop with repetition, rhythm, rocking …
Recent research shows that from 2 – 11 months, chanting nursery rhymes and singing songs with patterns help language acquisition.
The infant brain gathers data by interacting face to face with mum, dad, nan…the people it knows well. And stuffing things in their mouth, playing with mobile above cot, pushing a spoon in wall socket, …
Face to face interactions with the adults who love it, are essential.
The brain is wired to be complex - less language and you have a less complex brain.
Talk, tell them what you are doing, tell them why. Share book time together. Look at the pictures and tell them what the picture is about, read to them from a book, so they learn the squiggles are words that make sentences, that tell stories, that are fun. Kids from oral cultures, whose parents tell them stories, start school three years behind those whose parents read them stories from books. They may have the same intelligence, but lack of familiarity with the written word, leaving them three years behind, and will need considerable help to catch this up, if ever.
Photo on right: A modern western family, sitting in front of a screen, eating ultra processed food, and not talking to each other. Yet for millennia, the tea table was where our culture was passed on. Where our family values were perpetuated. Turn the screen off, eat meals with vegetables, that you have prepared and talk to each other.
Children who eat with their parents five or more days a week demonstrate healthier eating habits, are less likely to become obese, have fewer issues with drugs/alcohol, achieve better at school, and have a closer relationship with their parents.
How much TV or screen time is okay? For the first eighteen months, the research shows a baby should not be exposed to any screen time at all. It is not okay to leave your baby in front of a TV to babysit. From 18 months to 5 years the research advises that less than one hour a day may be okay, so long as the parent co-views. The parent must join in and participate; discuss what is happening to help their child understand what they are seeing. BUT only for an hour a day MAXIMUM. Sesame Workshop and Public Broadcasting Service are the only two trusted makers of evidence-based children's educational media. If the parent sits alongside the child and sings along with Cookie Monster and gets their child/children to join in too, then it is beneficial and okay.
Insist that your children, and theirs, live their life, live, not via a screen.
Family life must become a no screen life. It’s how we lived for the first 99.99% of our evolution as a species; and evolve we did, now we are going backwards, our mental health is failing, our ability to concentrate, to learn and to achieve is dissipating.
Instead, we have a generation of depressed teens, lacking self-regulation and with no ability to focus in class. Youngsters with no self-control where respect for others is non-existent.
Solution - Create concerned clusters of families around you. Whereby all the parents of your child’s friends, ban phones until at least age 14, and then only for 2 hours a day, but never in the bedroom; so, it’s not so hard on your child alone.
Create neighbourhoods where children can go down the street and play, or walk and talk with their friends, in person, face to face. Where they can learn to relate to others, to empathise, to chat, to debate and discuss and to laugh together.
Where young children play together; where they skip rope and chant rhymes, where the make imaginary houses and homes of their own …
Parents- it is your use of the cell phone/laptop that is destroying your children. Schools can ban phones in class, but our children need parents who talk to them and laugh with them, face to face. Children need other children to play with and to chat to.
.svg){kind=logo}
By Murray Trenberth