A friend many years ago when I asked him why his children were so amazing (socially and behaviourly) said that he always looked to the long term and asked himself “What is the best thing for my child in the long term?” Many of our decisions have come from looking at the long term – what kind of adults do we want our children to be? What can we do now to forward that?

I hasn’t been any easy ride (our children are adopted – they spent their early most important brain forming years in a Russian orphanage). But we are beginning to see rewards. Our daughter has become a sought after babysitter, she plays with kids, is not afraid of difficult behaviour in her charges, cleans up the kitchen and has the children clean up their toys before bedtime, is polite and talks to adults easily.
Mind you – I am also aware to take nothing for granted, I don’t think I can pat myself on the back until the kids are in their mid 20′s (maybe 40 for my more wayward son!)

Facebook and constant texting are two other things I don’t get. The constant updates from “friends” (read: barely acquaintances) annoyed me. And even with my best friend, after 40 or 50 minutes on the phone ever week or two, we don’t have anything more to say to each other. What in the world do people constantly text each other about?

As for computers, in theory they get unlimited time but in reality we’ll be monitoring how they use that time. For example, they have iPads on which they could be drawing, making videos, reading, watching TED talks (our eldest), interacting with overseas relatives as well as playing games. I’d say if all they did was play SIMS for hours we’d step in but in reality they tend to bore before that is needed.

My opinion is that “screen/TV/text time” is a bit of a red herring, what is important is HOW time is used. As a topical example: Thanks in a large part to screen time Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is the 29th richest person on Earth. Another example: Some parents restrict TV but encourage their kids to learn a musical instrument, ignoring the fact that most musical instruments are far from ergonomically ideal and require hours of repetitive action that is often done alone, indoors. Schools encourage kids to read books, and yet being “bookish” used to be a derogatory term suggesting an indoorsy, pale, weak, somewhat self-indulgent character.

Perhaps the other point is input v’s output. Sitting watching hours of The Voice/Australia’s Got Talent/Young Talent Time may be pointless unless your child also participates in some kind of performing activity. Watching hours of surfing videos may be pointless unless your child also spends hours in the surf. Sitting for hours in front of a computer screen may be pointless unless your child also becomes the next Mark Zuckerburg.

Wow, I’ve almost written my own blog post on the subject! Clearly it’s a good topic to discuss.

We sometimes watch educational stuff together, recently we watched Frozen Planet. That might happen for an hour in an evening. We always sit down and watch my husbands documentaries when they are on TV, that’s a family ritual. He makes the Nigel Latta Series. So we get first hand child rearing info form Nigel.

One question: What do you do in your family about videos/DVDs? Do you count them as TV? We often throw on BBC documentaries about penguins or sharks, etc — the kids love them. It still needs to be rationed, but perhaps a little differently to actual TV programming?

I’m often surprised myself at how little control many parents feel they have over their kids’ screen time. It’s also a good reminder that little increments of screen time can add up – which is especially sad what with Spring headed into Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and people all over the place with Vitamin D deficiencies.