PARENTING AND DIGITAL DEVICES - extracts from the iBook ‘Keeping Your Child Safe in the Online Jungle” by Shaun Brooker, Principal of Hamilton Christian School.

Have a Go at an Incentive Plan

Take a look on the internet and you will find many incentive plans for children. The blue sticky note (from dailymail.co.uk) lists four jobs that a child needs to complete in order to gain the WiFi password. The other lists a ‘point system’ which children can complete to a certain value as a part of a consequence. This could be adjusted for time on a device. As a parent I would like to think using activities that encouraged outdoor, creative or positive behaviour as the basis for an incentive plan is a great idea.

Not all Device Usage is Equal

When setting time limits and or dealing with issues of ‘misuse’ consider that the device is like a Swiss Army Knife. It can be used in many ways. You may like to have tight limits around the ‘entertainment’ (gaming, YouTube, Social Media...) aspect of the device. However, it is important to remember children can be very creative on the device, creating content (movies, music, sound clips, design...) and it can also support new learning through creative and engaging Concept Reinforcement (Mathematics games, spelling games, reading challenges...).

An important key to successful management of these devices is not to ‘ban’ the whole device because the limits of entertainment are pushed. Doing this may take away opportunities for your child in other more important areas. For example, if your child wrote on your table you would unlikely ‘ban’ the child from using a pen at school the next day. Likewise, if I caught my child reading late at night, after I had told him to turn the light out, I have the choice of ‘banning’ that book the following day (which is most likely) or I could ban him from all books for a time.

Through the use of ‘Guided Access’ on an iDevice it is very easy to give the child access to just one app such as ‘Mathletics’ without worrying that they will change the Concept Reinforcement’ time and make it car racing time!

Maybe consider different time allowances or rules for entertainment (gaming) use over content creation and creative usage, e.g. no entertainment during the week or 20 min gaming or 40 minutes creative usage per day.  

Keeping Your Child Safe in the Online Jungle’ can be downloaded from itunes.