Texting and Parenting
Practicing Family Law in Chicago, and being a parent to teenagers myself, means that I am always on the look out for news stories on parents and their children. Not all my stories deal with divorce! The last few weeks I’ve stumbled across a few articles on the same topic: texting and parenting. However, it’s not what you think.
Kids often get the bad rap for being attached to their phone, unable to make eye contact with their parents or look up at the dinner table. But there’s a new trend in town: parents ignoring their children in favor of their Blackberries or iPhones. You can read about it in this article and here is another one.
In one article, the reporter chronicles how a father made the explicit rule that he was not allowed to make phone calls for 90 minutes after coming home from work, in an attempt to show his children that they were more important than his job. However his wife pointed out to him that his rule didn’t matter if he was going to spend that time texting and answering emails anyway.
It’s important to remember that as parents, we lead by example. Asking our children to put down their phones during dinner means we need to do the same.
What are your thoughts on parenting and texting? Do you have rules in your home regarding the subject?
