Teaching Kids When To Hit The Off Switch

Recently I was at the market on the hunt for ingredients for a new salsa recipe my husband was eager to try. Thanks to the Food Network, we’ve discovered ingredients that I was convinced would require a plane ride to a foreign land, or long car ride to a specialty market! Who would have thought items such as tomatillos and red jalepenos or pobablo peppers would be at our regular supermarket…but, indeed, they were.

While en route to the tomatillos, I was run into by a small child, roughly knee high. Her mother was distracted on her cell phone. I looked down to see a cute little girl in pig tails in a very zen state with her portable PS 3. Her mother didn’t stop her conversation, or apologize to me, or nudge her to apologize to me, she just grabbed her by the elbow and steered her around my cart to where they were heading, and likely another collision with another patron at the rate they were going.

It perplexes me to no end that adults have to walk around in public places on the phone all the time, especially when they have their children with them. And, I’m dumbfounded as to the reasoning behind allowing kids to walk while playing a video game. It’s bad enough that we allow our kids to listen to their MP3 players while walking. They are usually listening so loudly that they can’t hear conversations around them, their names being called or oncoming vehicles. However, at least they have their eyes to guide them as they walk. To play a game, one is looking down. That is dangerous on every level and not a good precedent for behavior in public.

If a parent is going to take a child out in public, especially a school age child, why does that child need the distraction of a game or MP3 player? Have we truly become a society where we have to entertain our children all the time and can’t expect them to behave in public for regular errands and outings? What lessons are they learning by allowing that?

Kids need to learn how to act in public settings and what the norms are of those settings. We must also teach them boundaries of technology and social skills. To allow our kids to be plugged in all the time deprives them of learning how to get along in the world and interact with others in society. How will their fare when they are on their own someday if we keep them masked behind a device all the time and fail to teach them how to deal with the every day goings on in one’s life? I fear they won’t do so well.