Parenting: A Continuous Exploratory Journey

How many of us are expert parents? Even if you're 80 years old, there might be new aspects of your child that you're discovering, some of which might be incomprehensible to you. Parenting is a lifelong lesson.

Among my many roles and titles, I have one referring to myself as 'mom-in-training'. At an event, a new acquaintance asked after seeing that description on my LinkedIn profile, "Don't you feel ashamed calling yourself 'mom-in-training'?". Kudos to parents who are confident of their parenting skills and always have the answers for every parenting situation. I am not in that league, hence I acknowledge that I'm a mom-in-training.

Generally, most parents are like me - recognising that each child is different and the parenting experience at different juncture is sometimes like a trial and error. That said, it doesn't mean we bumble through as parents. It means we do the best we can but also know that there will be situations that are less clear-cut where books, grandparents, YouTube videos and supernanny blogs cannot help.

In the age of digitalisation, the buzzword 'Cyberparenting' or 'Digitalparenting' - has emerged. The digital space is evolving so quickly that parents find it challenging to keep up. It is already hard enough to cope with known threats, what more the unknown. Am I an expert? Ah... I hesitate to call myself that. All I can do is to share accumulated best practices that have worked for me and other moms. After all, mine is the first generation of parents to practice cyberparenting. That said, every child is unique, every household dynamics is different and every parent is gifted in some way. You know your child best, and will be able to discern which parenting method might work for your child at what situation.

Which is why in every White Byte workshop, I put parents in the driver's seat to identify their biggest digital concerns and design interventions that fit their families. It's all the parents' love, motivation and hard work. My role is to help the participants distill those concerns into manageable concepts and facilitate the solutioning process with them.

Scroll to see parents deciding their priorities and cross-sharing solutions.

The beauty of these workshops is that I always take something away from the parents. As I said, every family dynamics is different. With varying background and experiences, we benefit from each other's shared learnings and best practices. Parenting as a community means we have more eyes helping to watch over our children and a wider arsenal of experience to tap into.

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Good Bytes

Sharing the 3 top questions that I frequently receive. May these give you a starting point towards finding a sustainable solution for yourself:

• Screentime: How many hours should my child be allowed online?

  • Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) recommends up to 2 hours for children 7 to 12 years old excluding school work and up to 1 hour for children between 18 months to 6 years old. Online exposure for younger children is discouraged.

  • Building on MOH's guidance, the 2 hours and 1 hour time limit are best applied in chunks i.e. in blocks of 15 minutes. This teaches the child self-discipline and more importantly, the resourcefulness to find enjoyment offline.

  
  

• Monitoring: Should I monitor my child's online activity?

  • In our childhood, it was our duty to inform our parents where we're going when we headed out the house. Try instilling that duty in our children too.

  • Imagine having a virtual door to cyberspace and make it a conversation topic to chat about where they 'went' today, who they chatted with and what they saw.

  • If you're installing a monitoring app, always inform them that you will be checking in periodically to make sure they are safe. Never use it to spy.

    
    

• Addiction: My child is addicted to / constantly distracted by his/her phone. What can I do?

  • Very few children are clinically addicted to their devices. The phone is their primary source of entertainment which gives the impression that they're addicted.

  • Ask yourself this question 'What can I do to distract my child from the device?' Take back control of the situation by devising meaningful distractions that could draw the child away from their device.

  • If the child enjoys an alternative engagement more than the phone, the device will stop being their default go-to for entertainment.

Join the next Behind the Tik, Tech and Tok or request for a Cyber Momster workshop to find out more good device habits. We would like to have you share your tips too.

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Caring as a Community

Do you have a cyberparenting tip that has worked for you? What can you share that can equip other parents in their parenting journey?