IT’S 5am when I feel my 14-month-old daughter, Harriet, wriggle her way into the middle of our bed.
She’s been up three times in the night already and my husband Alex and I are completely exhausted – so I hand her my phone.
Charlotte Owen with husband Alex and her children Seb, 4, and Harriet, 2.[/caption]
Seb is ‘plugged in’ while Charlotte and the family enjoy lunch out[/caption]
If we don’t leap out of bed and start the day, she’ll have a tantrum so while she watches Bluey on iPlayer, we steal another 30 minutes of sleep.
It’s a situation the Princess of Wales would be sure to frown upon.
In an essay co-authored with Professor Robert Waldinger from Harvard Medical School, Kate gave parents a stark warning about screen time and the “epidemic of disruption”.
In it, she talked about being “physically present but mentally absent, unable to fully engage with the people right in front of us.”
Charlotte Owen and her children Seb and Harriet[/caption]
Princess Kate as the Home-Start centre in Oxford where she discussed the screen time issue with parents[/caption]
Princess Kate co-authored an essay talking about how too much screen time damages family life[/caption]
And she’s not wrong: at 5am, having had about five hours of broken sleep, we’re not in a position to be mentally present for our daughter. She gets a screen pushed in her face so we can survive the day
The essay, titled ‘The Power of Human Connection in a Distracted World’, sets out why meaningful relationships are the single greatest investment we can make.
My digital dummy regret
It comes on the back of her Early Childhood campaign which focuses on a child’s first five years being the most crucial for developing social and emotional skills that will be used in adulthood.
I bitterly regret using “digital dummies” for my children – which started with Harriet’s older brother, Seb – as a tech tactic to placate them.
Especially when the Princess of Wales points out that smartphones and screens have become a “constant distraction” in our lives and are fuelling the epidemic of loneliness.
I understand what Kate is saying but in reality, normal mums like me have to use more than a bit of tech while raising our children just to help us to keep going.
We don’t have nannies to tag in when we’ve had a bad night’s sleep or acres of garden for the kids to roam when they need to let off some steam.
In the early days of both Seb and Harriet, they were not good sleepers and I went from enjoying seven or eight hours a night, before they came along, to blocks lasting three hours at most.
It was an almighty shock.
Princess Kate says tech create a disconnect in the family home[/caption]
The tantrum tranquillizer
During the first two years of his life, Seb would be up at 5am — and that was after waking up as many as four times during the night.
Sometimes he would scream until we rocked him back to sleep, then start screaming again as soon as we put him down.
My husband, Alex, 38, and I soon got into the habit of bringing Seb into our bed, but those playful giggles quickly escalated into frustration as we begged him to go back to sleep.
Seb would throw tantrums, arching his back and crying as we tried to move him away from the edges of the bed to keep him safe.
But if we gave him a phone and his favourite episode of Brum — a kids’ TV show about a vintage car — he would soon quieten down. That meant we could close our eyes for a little bit longer.
Charlotte with son Seb, 4, and husband Alex[/caption]
In the beginning, Seb’s attention span was short, but by the time he was a year and a half, he’d happily watch for up to an hour.
When he got bored of one programme, we’d move on to the next: In The Night Garden, Supertato, Peppa Pig, Bluey, Paw Patrol.
And while the “mum guilt” cut deep, there was no denying screens made parenting easier.
Soon he was talking, and his first morning words turned into, “Can I watch Paw Patrol on your phone, Mummy?”.
If I said no, he would burst into tears and refuse to be consoled until we relented.
Eventually, Seb turned a corner and just after his second birthday he started sleeping through the night.
The second round
But then Harriet arrived 19 days later and she was a carbon copy of her brother – we couldn’t believe it actually, how bad she was at sleeping as well.
She would wake up at 4:30/5am having had multiple wake-ups through the night, sometimes for hours on end.
We were desperate so we resorted to what we knew worked – which was putting Bluey or Peppa Pig on one of our phones and letting her watch so she didn’t tantrum and we could get some much needed shut eye.
Charlotte admits she felt hard to give up the family’s phone habit when daughter Harriet was born[/caption]
In her essay, Kate says “our smartphones, tablets, and computers have become sources of constant distraction, fragmenting our focus and preventing us from giving others the undivided attention that relationships require.”
And I know that she’s right – I am distracting my children with a smartphone or a tablet and I’m not giving them the undivided attention they need.
But how does anyone have the energy to be a 24/7 parent when you’re running on empty anyway?
How long should kids be on screens?
Dr Amanda, who’s a parenting expert and child psychologist gave a general guide for parents who wish to limit screen time.
Age 1-3 years old
How long: 5 minutes per year of life in one sitting
Dr Gummer says: “If you are really hoping your child will learn from the screen time they have then one rule of thumb is that on average children can concentrate for 5 minutes per year of their life (i.e. 15 minutes at age 3).”
Age 1+
How long: 1 hour per day
Dr Gummer says: “For younger children we feel that around 1 hour per day is a sensible limit to aim for on a regular weekday.
“Once you add together time on mobile devices, TV, computers and other devices with screens this may not seem like much (and remember children may get screen time at school).”
Age 2+
How long: 2 hour per day
Dr Gummer says: “Various sources including the American Academy of Paediatrics recommend no more than 2 hours per day (for children aged 2 and over).”
Children of all ages
Over two hours a day is excessive usage
Dr Gummer says: “A recent study saw some detrimental effects in teenagers that used more than 3 hours per day of screen time and consider this ‘excessive usage’
I’ve tried to avoid relying on tech as a babysitter.
But, despite what the parenting books say, sticking Seb, now four years old, and Harriet, now two, in front of a screen is far easier than asking them to help with emptying the dishwasher.
Of course, this means that their total screen time soon racks up.
Seb’s at school now and on days that Harriet is at nursery as well they’ll maybe watch an hour.
But when Alex is at work and I feel fed-up with parenting on my own, it reaches seven.
I know I’m also guilty of leading by (bad) example.
Without my phone nothing in our lives would function
I “phub” my kids on the daily — scrolling on my phone while ignoring them — which, according to researchers at the University of Texas, can hamper a child’s language development.
In the essay, I feel like Kate addresses this directly when she writes, “we sit together in the same room while our minds are scattered across dozens of apps, notifications, and feeds.”
But everything is done through phones now and I find myself unable to manage my own life or my kids’ without constantly looking at it.
I have to look at my phone if I want to check the weather to walk to school, look at an email the PTA have sent me, get the address for the activity I’m taking Harriet to, reply to an email for work, text my mum back about some babysitting I’ve asked her to do or buy the emergency pair of gloves I need to get for Seb because his sister lost his other ones.
All of these things mean I’m doing exactly what Kate is railing against – sitting in the same room as my kids with my mind scattered across a million different things and not focusing on them while I’m doing it.
But if I don’t do that, then nothing in our lives will function.
Kate is right, in theory. We all need to be better and more present in our children’s lives.
To get them off screens and to be away from our own screens and invest in proper time with them.
But motherhood is hard and, in reality, we’re just doing what we can to try to survive.
