Disagreements between parents

Post Reply New Topic

Have you heard the term "iPad kids"? I have. I was determined not to raise an iPad kid. Then her mother gave her an iPad. Now she cries when it's taken away.

I feel jealous when other parents say, "I won't raise an iPad kid". I didn't want to raise an iPad either but that choice was taken away by my daughter's other parent.

I feel kind of guilty about raising an iPad kid. But I guess it's not my fault? If iPads are damaging then the damage is being done to my daughter either way, regardless of who's fault it is.

It would have been so much easier to not have introduced her to iPad in the beginning rather than try to convince her that iPads are unhealthy after she's already been given one.

You might want to entice her with alternatives such as art (musical instruments, drawing or painting supplies). Youmight buy her a puppy. You could interest her in physical activities like tennis, or swimming.

On one hand yes, being on iPads too much is a problem. But on the other hand, this is just a part of the young generation. It's good to minimize it, but it would be very difficult to keep it away from your kid entirely.

Do you remember when Tipper Gore decided that heavy metal music was turning all of us now middle aged people into psychopaths? As well as the old "realistic" video games like Mortal Combat and Resident Evil? I was a young adult when those video games came out. I clearly remember being blown away by them. Everyone was like wow, it's like we're looking at a literal human being about to come out of the screen.

Your kid is going to have video game rage when you take the iPad away, but that is normal. Were you ever playing a Mario game and on your last life and were about to get farther than you ever did and all of a sudden your parents turned it off so they could watch Dan Rather? There you go. We've all been there. So your kid will cry and you'll understand and you'll find something else for her to do. She'll be a better person one day because she'll been through these times of having to turn off the iPad.

Plus, now you can threaten to take it away for a day or a week or whatever as punishment, which works pretty well.

Does every generation think their childhood was the best one? Maybe I'm having the same problem. Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil and Mario don't seem so bad to me. But she keeps playing this game where she has to choose which dress the princess will wear, which colour of jewel will go into crown and what type of cake she will bake. Over and over again.

There's no challenge to it! Mortal Kombat may have been a little bit violent* but at least it had some challenge. Playing challenge free games is probably going to teach that life should be easy. Back in my day we had a better work ethic because we had to work hard at rescuing the princess from Bowser or Ganon.

*I joke, I know it's a lot violent but IMO fantasy violence is less harmful than realistic violent. As a child I was more likely to imitate the lowkey violence I saw in Mum's soap operas than imitate Sub-Zero ripping someone's spine out, for two reasons. 1) it was just impossible. 2) the context it was presented in (a world of magic, scifi, gods and demons) made it feel more disconnected from reality. I was more likely to imitate things that were presented in a realistic setting.

It will be hard to break the dopamine "link" between your child and the ipad but can hopefully be managed.

Is your daughter on the spectrum? I ask since she may naturally crave routines. This could be a good opportunity to leverage that tendency... set times, alarms, limits, et cetera.