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Are you worried about your child's growing smartphone addiction, don't know how to deal with the disturbing attachment? Don't worry, calm down! You need a better strategy to channelize your toddlers increasing addiction towards smart devices. Do you know toddlers always try to imitate their parents and relatives with whom they spend maximum time, so if you are spending the entire day on watching YouTube, or live sessions of Facebook and Instagram it is natural your child would develop the addiction for smart devices? Even if you are doing your 9 to 5 job from home in front of the laptop, it will stimulate them to spend more time with smart devices or in front of the television.
In this article, our content creators took special help from child mental health experts in order to come up with the best practices to channelize your kid's energy in a proper way. Before digging deep into the matter, let's see why your child is addicted to smart devices.
The growing time between ages three to fourteen is very crucial for every child not only for brain development but also for personality development. If you provide less edutainment (education + entertainment) option to your kid, they will certainly end up in developing an addiction for smart devices. Sometimes parents complain about the growing addiction of watching cartoons or other YouTube videos in smart devices, but they don't know how to reduce the addiction or how to replace it with something more productive. However, later in the article, our experts have highlighted some of the best practices which will help your child dealing with excessive addiction with smart devices.
Kids tend to imitate parents, so keep a strict eye at your addiction in the first place before complaining about your kids'. If you have to watch something, try to keep your child away from the Device so that they don't feel that the Device is more important to you that your child. Those behaviour promote your child's mindset towards smart devices. If you have to work in from the computer or laptop, try to close the door till you finish your work.
When you host a live session on your Facebook or Instagram, remember your child observe you from every angle, gradually they started to believe they have to do the same in order to get noticed. Well, as a parent you can't let them promote the behaviour; otherwise, they will not show interest in exploring other and better entertainment options like playing outdoor games, learning music or number games etc.
Sometimes it has been observed parents with extremely strict nature restrict their child to spend time with smart Device, end up in addicting with the same. It is nothing but reverse psychology for your child. They certainly develop an addiction for smart devices just because as a parent, you asked them not to do that.
Sometimes kids with excessive mobile addiction might reach such a degree that they have become distracted from being present in the real world. It also affects their social life while interacting with people in the real world. The child might isolate from friends and other family members, and only find comfort in spending time in the digital world. Besides, if as a parent, you are having an issue with your counterpart or other members of the family, it will partially affect your child's upbringing and mentality. Lack of attention to your child might make him/her addicted to smart devices. Your behaviour towards your child also has a lot of influence on their upbringing. Remember, there is a fine line between being strict and being flexible.
If your child has obsessive-compulsive behaviour toward learning something new or to an existing behaviour, you may find them spending more time with their smartphone instead of doing any other job. Such kids are inseparable from their smart devices after some time. They also tend to overreact easily over small things. The reason can be the growing addiction towards smart devices.
In most cases, parents do not understand when it is the high time to say no over their child's addiction towards smart devices. Sometimes parents are the one to put the smart Device in the child, just to keep them busy, but soon you will find them too busy with the Device that they will forget your existence.
Here are some of the early signs of addiction from which you will understand the course of your action towards your child's growing addiction to smart devices.
If you observe one or more of such problems in your child, you can do the following things to ease the addiction without being harsh on them.
Some things should be clear between you and your kids; you can set some limits of using smart devices. If required, you can be a little strict; it's better now than never. You can allow the playing with the smart devices one or two hours of the day, one hour in the first half and the other in the other half of the day. Try to keep them away from the smart devices before bedtime.
While playing with the smart Device, try to distract them with something better like cooking or serving or with some cleaning work etc. Try to talk about things that stimulate them as a child-like your childhood stories, also try to read a storybook and make it a habit, encourage them to read it on their own.
Try to mark some places like the dinner table, balcony, rooftop as a digital-free zone, so that your child will be mentally ready before entering those places and will be ready to give up their smart devices to spend time with the family.
Another great alternative to channelize your child's energy towards a proper direction is introducing online learning app where they will find different lessons suitable with their particular age. They can learn poems, numberings, alphabet and many more with the customized lessons from those apps.
You can also enrol them with online classes like dancing, learning music, learning musical instruments etc. There is a various online tutoring platform that provides tutors in Singapore. With online classes, they can learn something new while sticking to smart devices.
You can let your child learn gardening, which is a great alternative to spending time with smart devices. Gardening will make them calm from inside and will provide a sense of achievement when they see a seedling is growing to a full-grown tree; it will also help them in becoming caring and understand their responsibility towards nature.
Todays' busy parents often struggle to find time for their child, lack of attention sometimes provoke the kid to spend time with the smart devices. It would be better for your child if you spend more time with them; it will not only make you more acceptable towards your child but also help them in socialize.
If possible, bring a pet to your home and let your child take care of that, it will bring the caring nature out of your child, which will help them to become a good person. Taking care of pets will keep them away from smart devices, which in turn will help in maintaining a proper balance in their life.
Some kids start learning earlier, while some take more time to grow interested in learning something new. In general, from third-year onward kids start learning alphabets, numbers, colours and other basic things. If you enrol them with online classes, they can learn a lot of things from online instructors across the globe which is not possible with the traditional teaching method.
Toddlers require special attention while learning something new; they tend to ask more questions, which is a sign of a healthy kid. So, the online tutor for your child must be patient and compassionate, which is crucial to bring the best out of them. They must encourage the child to learn new things, which is why new-age parents prefer online classes over traditional methods to help their child in learning.
If you are looking for the best tutors in Singapore, sign up with us and post your learning requirement. Our team will review the requirement, and within less than 48 hours will connect you with the best online tutor in Singapore. We are one of the pioneers among online teaching, from last twelve years we are providing instructors to our students, not only for conventional subjects but also for learning musical instruments, foreign languages, for competitive examinations and more. So, no matter what your requirement is, we can certainly fulfil that with ease.
All our instructors are verified by our team members while creating the tutoring profile we double their experience and qualification so that the parents won't face any problems regarding the quality of teaching and the credentials of the tutor. Moreover, if you don't the teaching method of the tutor you can ask for a replacement, we will provide a replaced tutor for your child. We always believe in holistic learning that focuses on building self-confidence together with imparting bookish knowledge. If you are a teacher, interested in online teaching, sign up with us and create a tutoring profile. Don't forget to upload important credentials like your experience certificate, qualification certificate, proof of your expertise etc. Regular we provide instructors to more than a hundred students from all over the country, we would be happy to add you to our growing family.
Learn how to maintain a safe distance between your growing kid and smart devices. The sooner, the better. Also, discover how online classes can help your child ease the addiction of smartphone.
Tanaya is the Senior Content Developer at MyPrivateTutor, a writer by day and a reader by night. Backed by 4 years of online content writing experience, her specialization is in SEO content; also trying her hand in designing. She is also a HubSpot certified content marketer. She loves coffee and old school emotions.
