Anyway during one of those phone conversations, my friend told me something that has stuck with me and I feel compelled to clear it up. She said, “You know Tracy that the parents who see GetKidsInternetSafe (GKIS) suspect that you are that hyper-perfect mom who refuses your kids screen technology completely.” I choked on my packaged rice crispy treat, and then we cracked up.
Perhaps the irony hasn’t escaped you that I preach screen media limits through my ONLINE business. Moreover, I have seven (yes seven!) customized social media channels to help me.
And I have three happy, normal kids. I want them to stay that way. I don’t require that they live in a chemical-free room built of moss and dried twigs, drawing with repurposed berry ink and reading only the classics. That is only for #TechFreeTuesdays and #TechFreeThursdays.
The reason I created GKIS is because when I err (which is hardly ever), it is in the direction of being too generous with them. I mean technically, I love them too much. I work tirelessly for their care and am a shameless sucker for their begging. Dudes, I’m actually writing this article in an ear-shatteringly loud, massive volleyball complex that I drove two hours to get to at 5:30 am on a Sunday. I’d post a pic of the game, but the girls’ shorts are too short for public media (not kidding). And for the record, it’s intermission. That’s how much I love my kids.
It’s my love for them and my deep concern for all kids that motivated me to take on this enormous but important GKIS task. I’m not a perfect woman, but I do have some skills motivating and caring for little people. It’s what has allowed me to maintain a busy psychology practice for almost 20 years. From my office, I get the heart-piercing inside view of what all of us are going through and how we are coping.
Frankly fellow parents, we are in over our overly-scheduled, sleep-deprived heads when it comes to the rapid development of screen media technology. We are over-capitulating to slick marketing and our kids’ desperate pleas for the newest electronic device so quickly, that we don’t really know what the heck we are doing! We simply cannot keep up.
Let me just give you a rundown of the issues I’ve seen in my psychology office just within the last few months (details changed to protect confidentiality):
- A 12 year-old who is obsessively communicating (and sexting) with an anorexic peer she met on a video game who is cutting and intermittently suicidal
- A 14 year-old boy whose grades have been declining because he is logging into too many hours of online porn
- A 17 year-old who is healing after he finally reported that his brother had been molesting him with fetish methods learned from online pornography when he was only 9 and 10 years old
- A teen who faces expulsion due to videos she posted threatening a peer
- A 10 year-old girl who was caught on a porn site and then later discovered to have had a social media account with sexually provocative memes and inviting comments
- A 20 year-old who still acts out the dependence she had on her Internet predator from 12 to 14 years old
- And a 17 year-old who is seeking psychostimulants because he has already experimented with practically every other class of drug that he expertly shopped for and marketed from his iPhone 6
Of course, some of these ages, genders, and details were tweaked to protect the identity of my patients. But the stories are not exaggerated. These are real children with devoted and fearful parents seeking my reassurance and consult.
The truth is, we don’t even know what all of this technology and inappropriate exposure is doing to our kids’ development. I personally have resorted to the purchase of chaotic herds of bunnies, chickens, pigs, and baby goats to distract my beautiful and precocious 13 year-old (not kidding), not to mention soccer and volleyball…
I’d give my children a life with a variety of healthy activities simply because I deeply want for them to feel awesome. And to do that, I must be a good enough mom. I want everything for them that I can comfortably (and sometimes not so comfortably) muster. That includes healthy distraction, balanced with quiet family time and a well-planned, sensible GKIS toolkit expertly designed for screen media safety.
Let’s face it, until they’ve moved into a home of their own, we will all sometimes worry that there’s a hint of desperation in our parenting generosity, desperation partially motivated by the frenetic bubbles of text messaging and the soft sound of a computer keyboard.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com
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