Screen time has been a big struggle for me lately. While I know many people scoff at the "educational" value of many programs and computer applications (myself included), I can't deny that my kids live in a different world than I did as a child. Computer skills are taken for granted, and I've been impressed by what a very young child can grasp, and what doors that opens for them. I've also seen firsthand how they've picked up information via the computer, in a different way than they pick it up from "real life". The boundaries between "real" and "cyber" worlds may no longer apply the way they did 10 years ago. How does that affect things like our relationship to screen time?
Supersister Jen Lemen has an interesting take on screen time. I'm not entirely sure that I agree with it, but it's food for thought. (It's also proof that I'm backdating my post, heh.)
Thinking about limits today took me beyond small things like screen time and reminded me of a couple of different approaches to setting limits for children and teens. One is closer to the way I think about parenting, and one is closer to the way I was raised. They seem fairly diametrically opposed to me, but I'm wondering if they have more overlap than I imagine.
1) Impose limits on small things in order to avoid conflict over bigger things. This method posits that children (especially teenagers) have both a need and a desire to rebel against authority figures. The idea is to set strict limits in order to firmly establish parental authority as well as to channel children's need to individuate themselves into smaller issues. The theory is that strict limits will result in children being able to challenge authority by doing relatively harmless things, such as dying their hair, rather than by taking larger risks, such as trying illegal drugs. The corollary is that allowing freedom on smaller items results in children having nowhere to direct rebellious energy but larger, more dangerous behaviors.
2) Avoid setting limits on small things in order to foster autonomy and to make limits over larger things more clear. This method assumes that children need chances to exercise autonomy and that if given those chances, they will have a reduced desire/need to rebel against authority figures. Consequently, when parents set limits on larger, more hazardous behaviors, the child may take those limits more seriously because the limit is an exception and not the rule. The corollary is that children allowed to explore their own autonomy in small ways will have an increased ability to make decisions about more risky behaviors.
What do you think? Does avoiding small battles help when it comes to having to set limits for larger battles? Can the battlefield be shifted from big things to small ones? Does it need to be battle at all?
Do I even have a leg to stand on when a scene like the one below was in my recent past?
Can adults hope to set respectable limits when we sometimes break them ourselves? Which ones do we break, and why?