I’m sure this is a global experience for most parents these days: your child is crying and fussing over something you don’t have the energy to deal with and your eyes unconsciously search for the one thing that you know will be a foolproof method to get a bit of peace for a while. Then they land on the tablet sitting on the counter top. Jackpot.
It’s normal to want the easiest way out. Almost everyone will do it at some point in their lives. But does that make them a bad person for it? Incompetent? Quite the opposite. In fact, it usually just means they’re overwhelmed.
And parents are probably the most overwhelmed people I know. Anyone with children under ten can definitely testify to that: the sleepless nights, the early wake ups to get them prepared for school, the afternoons spent at the dining table struggling through their homework with them. And that’s not even everything they have to go through, either.
But the screen is easily one of the only things that will give those parents a brief respite from their hectic daily routine, whether they’re using it themselves or handing it to their children with a headache blooming behind their brow.
None of this makes you a bad parent. It makes you a human one. But here is what most parents don’t know about what is actually happening because of the screen.
Your Habits: How Your Child Sees Them
In psychology, there is something called observational learning, which basically explores how children learn through observation and imitation rather than just being told what to do and how to do it. A notable, and rather famous study on this particular learning style is Albert Bandura’s research on role models and how they affect the way children interact with their environment.
He found that when children observe an adult role model displaying a certain behaviour, they were much more likely to copy that pattern of behaviour on their own, without any prompting from other people. Children take in and absorb a lot more information than anyone realises.
But how does this relate to screens and how they’re being used?
There’s a simple explanation for it: children are watching all the time, even when you think they aren’t. They watch you pick up your phone instead of a toy to play with them. They watch you take a call while you are mid-conversation with them. They watch you doomscroll on the sofa while they play nearby.
So let’s pause for a second.
I want you to sit back and really think about this. Have you ever seen any habits in your children that make you wonder if they picked that up from you? A tendency to gravitate toward a tablet instead of a doll, perhaps? Maybe pretending to call someone on a fake phone, or even your own phone while it’s switched off, instead of spending time with their siblings?
These habits that they pick up are not always obvious and it’s rarely about the screen itself. It’s usually about what they learn screens are for.
So when they watch you reach for your phone the second you visually show signs of stress, they learn that screens are how adults handle hard feelings. When they watch you scroll during a quiet moment instead of sitting with them or just relaxing with a book, they learn that boredom is something to escape and fill, not something to sit with.
They aren’t learning what’s on the screen but rather your relationship with it.
And then they carry that lesson into their teenage years. Then their adulthood. Until it becomes an identity. A way to escape feelings instead of addressing them.
Phubbing: What it Means for You and Your Child.
There is this term that has been circling around recently called ‘phubbing’, which literally stands for ‘phone snubbing’. In basic terminology, it refers to being physically present with someone but mentally absent because of your phone or any other device that may be taking up most of your attention.
And we see this everywhere: At restaurants where everyone is so focused on the phones in their hands that they forget to talk to each other. At gatherings where ‘those teenagers’ are more interested in scrolling reels than making conversation with the people around them. And literally anywhere else people are socialising with a device in hand.
But before all of this starts guilt tripping you, I want to start by saying that we do this not because we don’t love and respect the people around us, but because our brains have been trained by the apps we use to make checking our phones and devices feel urgent.
And for most of us, this constant phone checking is almost involuntary. Our minds are so filled with “oh, someone texted me, I have to reply” and “my favourite influencer uploaded, I have to check it”, that it just spirals into something that pulls us away from our children dozens of times a day.
A study published in 2022 by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that mother phubbing was linked to higher emotional and behavioural problems in young children, due to a weakened mother-child attachment. Yet another major study by Frontiers in Psychology found that parental stress is the most commonly leading factor towards phubbing, thus leading to parent-child conflict and eventually with children turning to screens themselves for emotional escape.
And that’s the dangerous loop every parent should be made aware of. Stress drives us to our phones. Our phones distance us from our children. Then that distance stresses our children until they also turn to their own screens.
What Your Children Are Actually Learning
To pull all of this together, what are our children actually learning from watching us?
Well, that’s simple: when life feels hard or starts to get boring, you pick up a device. That the phone is more interesting than the conversation in front of you or that big feelings are something to escape, not fully address.
But that doesn’t have to be something that they have to keep learning. You, as their parent, can change things for them. You have the ability to halt that cycle by making changes. And they don’t have to be ground-breaking changes that take effect right now after you close this tab. The changes can just be small, gradual ones. Here are a couple of things you can try with your child:
- Name the Feeling
The next time your child is overwhelmed, before you reach for a solution or a screen, try saying this out loud: “I can see you are really frustrated right now.” That’s it.
Research shows that simply naming a child’s feeling activates the thinking part of their brain and helps bring the emotional response down. You aren’t fixing the problem. You’re giving their brain something to hold onto instead of drowning in the feeling.
- Choose One Presence Window
Pick one moment in your daily routine and make it screens-down. It can be literally any time: the school pick-up. The first five minutes after they walk through the door. A meal together. All you need to do is make sure that it’s the same time every day. Consistency and predictability is important, so your child knows what to expect.
And lastly, when parents regulate themselves well, put the phone down, and stay present, children become more securely attached, they begin to mirror your habits. Their self-regulation grows stronger and their nervous systems become more resilient.
You aren’t just protecting your child from screens. You are building their nervous systems, by building yours first.
That’s the whole reason that the work we do here at Ambba matters. Not because screens are the devil’s spawn and definitely not to make anyone feel guilty. But because Allaah placed our children in our care as an amaana, a trust, and the version of you that shows up for that trust doesn’t need to be a perfect one. All you have to do is try.
If this stirs something in you, if you’re struggling with screen use and there is a constant battle of the screens with your children, come join us every Tuesday, where we not only address hard emotions, but also give practical tools that help reduce weekly stress build up.
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