June 25, 2015

Technology! It's everywhere and most of us can't live without it. Actually, my 88 year old mother-in-law does, but sometimes it's not easy.  Even she is thinking of buying a tablet so that she can see family photos and have some way of accessing the internet which she is currently paying for but has NEVER used. Since she lives 3000 miles away from me, I would love for her to buy a tablet so that I can have a quick and easy way to communicate with her and send her photos and recipes (and so that she can see this Face Book page and my website)!

Last month, I wrote about the dangers of too much technology for our children, and how children spending too much tech time impacts their communication development. But what about PARENTS spending too much time on technology and ignoring their children?! How is this impacting their children's communication and social-emotional development? It's a classic case of "Do as I say and not as I do". The message we are sending says that our cell phone conversations, social media and text messages are more important than our own children, or the people we are "spending time" with. Perhaps we have all been there. Time to rethink this habit? Check in next week as I will explore this topic in more detail.

Update March 2016-Here is an article from the American Psychological Association about the effects of parental smartphone use on their children's development: Smartphone=not-so-smart parenting?

Thanks for reading,

Cindy McCallum, M.Sc., R.SLP, SLP(C), CCC-SLP

Registered Speech-Language Pathologist

Founder, WiseOwlSpeech