In my regular contact with a lot of parents, here is a short summary of some of their main areas of stress and concern. These may resonate for you too.

Many parents report feeling they are:

  • Too busy and time-starved
  • Suffering from information overload
  • Tired
  • Overwhelmed with responsibilities and choices
  • Stressed
  • Lacking in perspective
  • Short of creative ideas of what to do when they have time with their children
  • Disconnected from their intuition and common sense

This can result in parents inadvertently falling into the following parenting traps which do nothing to help them protect and prepare their children for a fast-changing digital world. Subsequently, they may:

  • Overuse technology as a babysitter for their children
  • Use technology as a bodyguard, thinking their children are safer in front of a screen than elsewhere
  • Default to sending their children off to engage with a screen when they are tired or too busy to engage with them
  • Use technology to substitute for time spent with their children
  • Use technology for peace and quiet in the home and to appease an upset child
  • Use technology to put children to sleep at night
  • Lack ground rules and boundaries when it comes to their children’s use of technology
  • Not manage their own use of devices in front of their children
  • Give in to their children’s nagging to use technology whenever they want to
  • Be overwhelmed by their own ignorance of the media landscape
  • Not aware of the potential dangers and threats posed by technology
  • Use technology as a crutch not a tool
  • Cop out of parenting and hiding behind technology
  • Be hyper-vigilant to the point of being obsessive and denying access to techcnology completely
  • Not care what their children are up to online or on-screen
  • Not share common ground rules around the use of technology with parents, partners, spouses or a child’s caregivers such as a nanny, au pair or grandparents, do not have common ground rules
  • Unconscious parenting

Tech-Savvy Parenting Nikki Bush Tech-Savvy Parenting book has the answers

If any of the above apply to you, please, please get hold of a copy of my book, Tech-Savvy Parenting for an easy to understand overview of the digital world our children are so attracted to. It is also filled with age-appropriate guidelines to help you to navigate this new world confidently, helping to prepare your children to take advantage of the best of what the digital world has to offer and to protect them from the worst.

You need to find your middle ground. This book will show you how.

Click here for more information on this bestselling parenting guide.