How are you & kids feeling?
Apologies for a long absence away from this blog. Here’s a look at the habits that help kids (us all!) navigate adulthood…
Piñata party: where you smash something up in order to get treats. (c) homemade kids
I’ve been re-reading the posts on Homemade Kids recently and am so glad that I have some kind of a diary on this blog about everyday adventures with young children.
Now that I’m out of that daily whirr of time management and meal-making it seems that I have a lot more than 24 hours in a day. For starters I have time to follow the news, which is why I’ve been following with some concern the info that depression in girls is linked to higher use of social media. You can read a summary of the report in the Guardian here.
More time also means that I can even make resolutions to change up habits… This January I’m planning to follow the five ways to wellbeing defined by the New Economics Foundation (admittedly back in 2008 when phones really weren’t such a big thing as they are now, but it did also shake up the long-held view that feeling bad was reminded by volunteering and country dancing). NEF’s suggestion is that you should do some of these things – all of them perhaps – every day in order to feel that your life has purpose and all’s well with the world. They are quite vague/large topics and habits aren’t that easy to change. But it’s certainly a more interesting to do list than tidy up, grab coffee, pay bills…
The five ways to wellbeing might also be useful for the young women who over-use their phones and find themselves stuck in a self-affirmation cycle that seems to lead to low mood and worse.
- Connect
- Be active
- Take notice
- Keep learning
- Give
The video has a little bit more info.
Meanwhile I observe that my teenagers are insanely busy on their phones. To be honest, that’s also my main way of communicating with them… although we still have regular family dinners.
Over to you
Do you have any tips on how to show your child/teenager to use their phone so it’s a bonus to their life not a burden?
Explore posts in the same categories: parenting
Tags: 5 ways to wellbeing, girls and phones, low mood, phone use, skills for kids
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Homemade Kids 
January 11, 2019 at 10:21 am
We have no phones at mealtimes and everyone – except my eldest- leaves their phone downstairs at night. We have had a lot of battles about this but now that she’s 17 it’s harder to make her do things. My middle daughter received a phone last summer before she went to secondary school and I’m determined to be more strict with her.