Kids Are Sponges — They Soak Up Everything They See

It was a day off, and we spent the whole of it at home together, my little one and me.

Worn out from playing with my whole body and from tearing through the housework,
I flopped down on the floor beside my baby while they played on their own for a minute.

And then my baby stopped playing and started crawling toward me.
Hehe, coming to me, are you — so I sat there waiting,

Wait..?

It wasn't me. It was the phone, lying there on the floor beside me.

Tap, tap on the screen. Poke, stroke, poke.

They were copying, exactly, the way I touch my phone.

Nobody had taught them. They had simply been watching, right there next to me, how mom shops on her phone, chats with her friends in messages, rests with a video on. (feat. Bandura's social learning)

All that time, my baby had been watching a grown-up hand move across a phone!
Feels a little like my secret got out? ;)

They say the reward circuits in a child's brain grow to fit whatever stimulation they get most often. (feat. ABCD Study)

The problem isn't using a phone as such, but which stimulation the child has been exposed to — which means me, and us, the ones the child is watching.

Shall we try just one thing today?
Watch yourself, just once, and notice when you pick up the phone in front of your child!

Shopping, and anything else that really has to happen on the phone, goes so much better once your child is asleep.
When I'm with my child, look my child in the eye — that's my latest promise to myself!
Keeping it 100% of the time is hard, of course.... lol

In the next post, let's look together at the natural hormones a child's body makes all by itself.
Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins, melatonin.

For every hormone, I'll share a game you can play with your child today!
All it takes is your heart and your body!

Today, notice your own hand reaching for the phone in front of your child, just once.
Noticing is where our growing begins.