
I wish mum's phone was never invented - polskibus
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-44224319?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_source=facebook
======
z5h
This is hard. Children can be incredibly boring. I love my kids immensely and
they are definitely fascinating at times. But there are games they want to
play that literally put me to sleep. Or sometimes my daughter will take 15
minutes to brush her teeth. Should I just stare day after day, week after
week? It's BORING. Right now my kid is taking the longest dump and I'm waiting
outside of the bathroom. What should I be doing?

~~~
simonh
Young children from 3 to 5 years old are awesome. You can spend hours playing
with some sticky tape and a sheet of paper. make a sticky loop with the sticky
on the outside, and use it in between to stick things together. Make a Möbius
strip and ask them to draw a line along it. Make a three colour
hexaflexagon[1]. Make paper dice with different numbers of sides, drawing them
out flat with tabs and cutting them out and sticking them together.

The first 3 to 5 years are critical in several stages of a child's mental
development[2]. Too many adults think kids are a waste of time until they are
older, but that couldn't be further from the truth. The more time you spend
with them and the more of a positive relationship you develop, the more it
will pay off in spades later on. They seek attention because they love you and
they desperately want to spend time with you. 4 year olds want to get involved
and help with everything - let them, even if it means the job takes twice as
long. You will never have as much influence over the development of your child
again.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexagon#Hexaflexagons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexagon#Hexaflexagons)

[2]
[http://www.factsforlifeglobal.org/03/](http://www.factsforlifeglobal.org/03/)

~~~
xevb3k
Yes, but have you ever looked after a 3 year old for 16 hours a day, 7 days a
week. It’s hard work, and I doubt most people can maintain absolute focus on
their kids all the time for that length of time...

~~~
simonh
I split the work 50/50 with my wife for the most part. We both had work
shifts, so arranged things so when one was working the other looked after the
girls. It was hard on our relationship, but worked out for the best.

It's incredibly hard work, and draining because they are potentially in danger
almost all the time. We were lucky enough to have two girls 15 months apart,
which is more work sometimes, and less others because they played a lot
together. However some of my fondest memories of spending time with my
daughters is from that time.

~~~
xevb3k
That sounds tough, happy to hear you made it through.

I’ve seen quite a few families where one parent doesn’t do any childcare...
that looks super tough, which is why I can forgive those parents sometimes
zoning out and playing with their phone...

------
buserror
I wish the BBC stopped downgrading their coverage to the level of the
mirror+daily wail websites, and create articles by cut&pasting other bits of
'social media' to make 'content'.

As a non-native english speaker, for many years I looked up to the BBC to give
me nice, literate -- often bland -- coverage, with excellent use of the
language, vocabulary and no notion of dumbing down the language -- on the
contrary.

These days, it's a race to the bottom.

------
patorjk
The problem seems to be the parents, not the technology. It reminds me of a
VSauce episode that brought up the following interesting antidotes:

> In 1871, the Sunday Magazine published a line that may as well have been
> written today about texting. "Now we fire off a multitude of rapid and short
> notes, instead of sitting down to have a good talk over a real sheet of
> paper." And the Journal of Education in 1907 lamented that at a modern
> family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual has his head
> buried in his favorite magazine. [1,2]

If the parents weren't lost in their phones, they'd be lost in something else.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc)

[2]
[https://sites.google.com/site/vsaucetranscripts/scripts/juve...](https://sites.google.com/site/vsaucetranscripts/scripts/juvenoia)

~~~
rorosaurus
"It's okay, because it happened in the past, too." is such a weak argument in
my opinion. We should strive to present our best regardless of the past.

History repeats itself, so take note and compensate accordingly.

~~~
patorjk
I am not making the argument that the behavior is ok. I'm showing that people
in the past have complained about similar behaviors and stating that blaming
the technology is probably not the right idea.

------
MikkoFinell
"That is so sad and convicting. Great reminder for us all to put those phones
down and engage with our kids more."

I imagine a mother posting that comment on her phone, with a couple young
children looking at her sadly in the background. She feels good about the
change she decided to make in her life, after checking facebook just one last
time.

~~~
struppi
I know, I am saying this every time there is a discussion about social media,
but...

Deleting the Facebook and Twitter apps from my phone was one of the best
decisions in the last 12 months or so.

More time for the kids. Less distraction. I still use those services, but only
on a computer - so, not all of the time.

------
vis52
This goes beyond generations.

Technology, especially the widespread technologies like smartphones are
something that just happened upon most people.

So most people haven't adapted on how to use them responsibly. Just look
around the average cafe, you can usually find a group of people sitting
together but not talking about anything, they just look at their phones.

This also seems to reveal an underlying issue, one which I also experienced.
Before smartphones usually, you'd make up conversation, smalltalk, even if you
didn't want to talk or had anything interesting to say. These days instead of
doing that people just seem to ignore each other and do something that is
interesting, using their phones.

~~~
athenot
> Before smartphones usually, you'd make up conversation, smalltalk, even if
> you didn't want to talk or had anything interesting to say. These days
> instead of doing that people just seem to ignore each other and do something
> that is interesting, using their phones.

That is precisely the root of the problem. That means that the interpersonal
relationships with friends and family have been hijacked by for-profit
organizations pushing "more interesting" content. This contributes to dividing
society even more.

~~~
gowld
Or it means that people have an escape from unwanted interactions they were
previously forced into.

~~~
chipperyman573
How are you forced into a conversation with a group of people you chose to go
somewhere with? If you didn't want to talk with them, don't accept their
invitation to get coffee

------
castlecrasher2
> However, one mum pointed out that her teenagers were just as bad, often
> choosing their phone over family time.

Fight fire with fire, that's what I say. My kid is crying? I cry right back!

------
univalent
I was definitely addicted to my phone right around the last election cycle.
Podcasts, reddit politics threads, other social media, websites, you name it.
Luckily, its an easy habit to kick. I use timers and a tracking app on my
phone to monitor pickups and screen time spent. I try to hit 12 hours between
opening any social media apps, 6 hours between opening any news apps etc. I've
managed to get it down to under an hour a day.

~~~
hcurtiss
Are you on iOS or Android? I find these tools for iOS are more limited. Maybe
I'm missing something?

~~~
joshwa
[https://inthemoment.io/](https://inthemoment.io/)

~~~
graeme
Do you use that yourself to limit app usage?

I'm interested to try it. I did for a bit. I found it showed me "this is how
much you used your phone too much in the past", but it couldn't influence my
present or future behaviour directly.

------
liberatus
Perfect time to quote one of my two 'must have parenting books', The Collapse
of Parenting.

"To become a better parent, one must become a better person."

~~~
jandrese
> "To become a better parent, one must become a better person."

Screw that, isn't there a quick fix?

/s

~~~
eloisant
"School teachers hate her! She found one weird trick to become a better
parent"

------
pjc50
Hardly anyone has mentioned that there are plenty of families that do, or did,
the same thing with the television. Endless vaguely engaging wallpaper.

One of the subplots of Fahrenheit 451 (published 1953) is that houses would
get wraparound screens with a virtual Family on them that people would engage
with more than the real family.

------
Elvie
We have a rule of no phones at the table. Unless it is for a purpose - while
in the middle of conversation if there is a question we can't answer we will
check the phone. ("what does a giraffe sound like?" "what does the gallbladder
do?")

Otherwise, yes I will use my phone while the children are in the park in the
sandpit or playing around. If I was helicoptering over them all the time, they
wouldn't explore the climbing frames alone - and i do keep an eye in case they
fall but want them to have the confidence to do it alone

and they see how the phone can be useful - want an expensive toy in the shop?
let's check the phone and see if we can find it cheaper... \- are we lost?
let's learn to use a map... \- how do you say x or y in a foreign language?

so, let's stop the mum (mom) guilt...

~~~
phyllostachys
That sounds like reasonable phone use to me whereas the article seems to hint
at using a phone instead of engaging.

------
jedberg
I solved this problem by giving my two year old my old phone. She doesn't
complain and I get to use my phone in peace. She calls me out when I'm trying
to use the phone and she wants attention.

And in case anyone is wondering, her vocabulary soared after we started
letting her use the phone, and most people comment on how advanced her
language skills are, so anecdotally the phone seems to be helping her not
hurting her, despite all the objections we get when they see my toddler using
a phone.

~~~
goodroot
So your child will accelerate through language development thanks to this
device. At some point, they will discover the endless rabbit holes including,
but not limited to, pornography, technology, philosophy, gaming, and politics.
Their comprehension in all these areas will see similar advances.

But then what? What will happen when they need to spend time with themselves?
How will they relate to other people? What happens when novel information is
no longer novel? Will drugs help? How will they cope with the stresses of
life?

This is a slippery slope. We are only now seeing how total the consequences to
what it means to be a social people.

~~~
isodude
Given normal circumstance(no mental illness etc), kids get bored by those
devices too, as with information and learning. They adapt and learn how to use
the tools to meet their will.

I think the magic ingrediences here is love, hugs, attention (when they seek
it) and time is what truly matters. That will guide down the slippery slope
they will take regardless. If the kids want to play, learn from it and can let
it go without having problem with it, it should ok.

Anyway it's something they need to learn since most things in life will be
tied to electronic devices.

------
Jedd
> "Wow. Out of the mouths of babes! We are all guilty!" responded one user,
> Tracy Jenkins.

Not true, Tracy.

Some people - not just children - have long ago identified the addiction and
moved to avoid it.

------
rhacker
Yesterday I was leaving a grocery store at the same time as another customer
who had 3 kids with her. I got into my car and noticed the family getting into
the car next to mine.. being a polite guy I kinda waited a bit for them to
pack in to the car and also to wait for them to drive off. After about 3
minutes I was still waiting but being polite wasn't watching closely. Finally
I had to see why they were taking so much time. The 3 kids were just sitting
in the back seat quietly and the mother was just messing around on her phone.
soo this is a thing.

~~~
prawn
Definitely messing around on her phone? I've got into the car with my kids and
spent time using my phone to get directions to something, send messages to
organise things, respond to emails, etc. My partner works in social media so
is paid to review, post and respond on Instagram/Facebook/etc, including out
of hours.

------
learnstats2
The question was "what invention do you wish had never been created?"

This is not a very nice question for second grade - something is generally
described as an invention if it solves a problem, so second graders are
unlikely to have a realistic sense of how inventions could be bad.

The phone is the most visible "invention" to second graders and I find it more
surprising that only 4 out of 21 said it - any reasonable answer to the
question is likely to viral around the classroom.

~~~
Nasrudith
I would have expected shots as a common answer as an invention they are
exposed to only negatively.

------
derefr
A smartphone isn't an activity; it's a virtual place where activities happen.
Kids (and, apparently, opinion-piece writers) don't usually understand this.

"My mom is on her phone too much!" could _actually_ mean any/all of:

• my mom is a workaholic

• my mom is always chatting with her friends she had to move away from to give
me a better place to live

• my mom is flirting on Tinder with my stepfather-to-be

• my mom is tired from work and zones out watching Youtube videos

• my mom is "addicted" to knowing what celebrities are up to so she has water-
cooler conversation to share

• my mom is in a self-perpetuating fear spiral, feeding herself every horrible
news story she can find even though she hates the feeling of reading them, and
should probably see a therapist

• my mom is addicted to showing off on Facebook

• my mom likes reading books

Every one of these _activities_ existed before smartphones; they just occurred
in different places/formats.

You'd buy tabloids for the celebrity news; you'd watch the nightly news on
cable; you'd flirt in bars; you'd travel to visit friends, or have long,
nightly telephone calls with them; and you'd keep up with the real Joneses
next-door instead of keeping up with the virtual Joneses on Facebook. And
you'd be a workaholic by always being at the office, rather than by being home
but inattentive.

~~~
socialist_coder
I think you're missing the point here.

There are many times when a parent should be giving their attention to their
child, but they aren't because their attention is on their phone. The specific
activity they're doing on their phone doesn't matter.

Before, you could still do these activities instead of focusing on your child,
but the way that manifested itself was completely different.

A parent going to the bar after work is different than a parent being at home
but ignoring their child because they would rather look at their phone. In the
first case, there is a clear line between when the parent is at home and when
the parent is at the bar. And, it is fairly obvious if the parent is spending
too much time at the bar and not enough time at home.

In the smartphone situation, the parent can now be on their phone literally
100% of the time they're at home. The child has no idea if their parent is
ready to focus on them, or is going to be distracted by the phone. And, it's
not obvious at all if the parent is spending too much time on the phone.

Therefore, from the perspective of the child, replacing the old activities
with a smartphone activity is much much worse.

~~~
derefr
I don't see how the focus on "the way that manifested itself" is at all
relevant.

My point is: bad parenting is bad parenting. As far as I know, smartphones
haven't _created_ bad parenting, or other social ills. They've just made it
less _legible_ , because now both the healthy activities and the unhealthy
ones just look like "using your phone" to external observers.

If the point is to figure out whether someone is a good parent, measuring
"time spent on smartphone" will give completely useless answers, and so
judging a parent for spending a lot of time on their smartphone at home is
simply wrongheaded. You have to ignore the phone (the medium), and look at
what they're actually _doing_ (the activity.)

Fun fact: some parents do much of their communication _with_ their children
through their phone. Non-deaf parents of deaf children will often text more
than they sign.

~~~
tlarkworthy
Play groups explicitly ban phones because otherwise some parents are always on
their phones. This was not possible before smart phones.

Being at a play group is mutually exclusive with actively doing work as a
workaholic. With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity
with your child. Its a new issue. I think in the old days bad parents were
forced to be good parents sometimes because they had to look after their
children. Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7 and children are picking up
on it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> With smart phones you can be a bad parent while being in proximity with your
> child. Its a new issue.

Having observed quite a number and variety of parents in proximity with their
children over the years, I can quite confidently state that being a bad (in
the sense of neglectful) parent in proximity to a child does not require a
smartphone and is not a new issue.

And obviously being an even worse (abusive) parent in close proximity to a
child _really_ doesn't require a smartphone, and is equally not a new issue.

> I think in the old days bad parents were forced to be good parents sometimes
> because they had to look after their children.

No. You never _had_ to look after your children except out of a desire not to
be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to
avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed.

> Now bad parents can be bad parents 24x7

They always could, and those “best” at being bad parents often were.

~~~
tlarkworthy
> No. You never had to look after your children except out of a desire not to
> be a maximally neglectful parent, either out of sense of duty or desire to
> avoid adverse social consequences. That hasn't changed.

This is my main point. It has changed. If you leave your young child at home
and go to work, you are criminally neglectful. If you stay at home and read
your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are not criminally neglectful.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This is my main point. It has changed.

But, it hasn't.

> If you leave your young child at home and go to work, you are criminally
> neglectful.

True.

> If you stay at home and read your phone but otherwise ignore them, you are
> not criminally neglectful.

False. It may be harder for authorities to get the first lead which triggers
an investigation which identifies criminal neglect in that case, but it is
still criminal neglect. With or without the phone, which is immaterial; you
can stay home and drink liquor all day while neglecting your child. Or stay
home running an in-house brothel. Or stay home reading a book with the kid
shut up in another room. Or, well, lots of things that don't need a
smartphone, many of which are depressingly well attested in the records of
actual child neglect cases.

There have been high profile cases of people who stayed home with their
children and severely neglected them being identified, investigated,
prosecuted, and punished...since before smartphones were a thing. And, even in
the ones after smartphones, I've never seen smartphone use identified as a
significant factor.

------
osrec
My 8 year old cousins are crazy about taking my phone to play games on
whenever they come to visit; I literally have to hide it from them. Maybe the
kids mentioned in the article were a bit younger (and perhaps their parents
are a fair bit younger, with different phone use habits to my uncle, who is in
his mid 40s)

~~~
batiudrami
It's a completely different issue. I was never allowed a Game Boy and was
crazy about them when I visited someone who had one. But I would have noticed
if my parents were playing Game Boy and not giving me attention all the time.

------
beastcoast
My child learned to say "put your phone down daddy!" from Sesame Street when
she was just 4 years old.

------
arprocter
Strange that the BBC quote says 'mum' but the original piece uses 'mom'

~~~
lmm
The BBC writes in British English, and that's how the word is spelled here
(or, if you consider them to be distinct words, "mom" is not a word). Just as
I'd expect the BBC to write e.g. "colour" even if quoting an American source.

~~~
arprocter
I was always lead to believe that anything inside "these" was a direct quote

~~~
lmm
My understanding of newspaper tradition was that quotes can always be edited
for clarity or grammar. Some famous quotes go further, e.g. "Crisis? What
Crisis?" was printed in quotes despite not being the words Callaghan said.

------
roryisok
> However, one mum pointed out that her teenagers were just as bad, often
> choosing their phone over family time.

What a stupid comment. She's basically excusing her own behaviour because her
teenagers do it.

------
cm2012
Kids don't need constant attention.

------
Elvie
How about dad's phone?

------
crashdown
/r/thatHappened

------
mathattack
Once you’ve juggled a hard career with parenthood, it’s very hard to judge
others.

