Rules for raising children in the age of technology

A recent article in The Weekend Australian highlighted the difficulties faced by parents raising children in the age of constantly accessible technology. American social psychologist, Jonothan Haidt, offers the following notion to parents.

How would you feel as a parent volunteering your first child, aged nine, to be raised on Mars, in an ambitious project to create the first human settlement outside Earth? Your child is keen to do it, and loads of their friends are going as well. But after investigation, you find that no proper studies have been conducted about the impact on children living on Mars and, even worse, the planners do not seem to care about the children’s safety. Would you let them go?

Heidt contends this is exactly what has happened on Earth, before our eyes, in our homes and with disastrous consequences for our children. His thesis is childhood has been transformed by a small group of big tech companies. Since 2007, smartphones have changed the lives of all those who use them. It has been a ‘rewiring’ of childhood, with new technologies. Heidt says most parents are fed up and hate what is going on and they want to change, but don’t know how. He put forward the following tips for parents:

Limit non-educational screentime
Encourage technology free sleepovers
Encourage walking to school
After school is for free play
Go camping and don’t take technology
Learn how to use parental controls and content filters
Shared meals should always be technology free
Don’t allow devices in bedrooms
Consider a ‘digital sabbath’ each week

Staffing

This week we farewell Mrs. Katie Dopheide from the Early Learning Centre. Katie has made a tremendous impact in the Early Learning Centre and with the After School Care program. We wish her all the very best in her future endeavours and thank her for her contributions to College, as a staff member and parent.

House Cross Country - Mirranatwa

Tuesday saw ELC 4 to Year 6 students, teachers, parents and grandparents make the trek to the Victoria Valley for our inaugural Mirranatwa House Cross Country. We were blessed with amazing autumnal weather.

If you have ever spent time in a forested area, listened to the birds and watched the sunshine filter through the trees, you’ve participated in the Japanese practice of ‘shrinrin-yoku’ or forest bathing. Breathing in clean, fragrant air and soaking in the sights of the textured ground and the shapes of the leaves in the sky. Touching the soft, green moss carpeting the shaded stones or the rough bark on the trees. Letting the stillness around you influence your state of mind and make you forget the constant motion of daily life. Tuesday was a sensory experience.

It was an incredible day of cross country running, forest bathing and connecting as a learning community. Mrs. Louise Patterson’s foresight, planning and coordination were top shelf. The students were greeted with an old-fashioned cross-country course with undulations, open ground running and forest thickets. They all did so very well on a really challenging course. Congratulations to Learmonth House on a wonderful win in the House competition.

Results:

12/13 years

Girls: Boys:

1st Grace O’Sullivan 1st Sidney Hawker

2nd Ado O’Brien 2nd Hugo Toma

3rd Evie Templeton 3rd Fred Nagorcka

11 years

Girls Boys

1st Elsie Dyer 1st Johnny Fenton

2nd Adelaide Farquharson 2nd Max Cameron

3rd Alinta Margetts 3rd Lachlan Sweeney

10 years

Girls Boys

1st Maggie Wallis 1st Harry Diprose

2nd Milla McClure 2nd Thomas Kennedy

3rd Violet Shrive 3rd Lachlan Pickford

9 years

Girls Boys

1st Harriet Small 1st George Robertson

2nd Hazel Johns 2nd George Whinney

3rd Eloise Bufton 3rd Fred Hawker

8 years

Girls Boys

1st Rosie Bell 1st Will Diprose

2nd Annie Barber 2nd Herbie Dyer

3rd Sanvi Bhutani 3rd Jack Nagorcka

7 years

Girls Boys

1st Emily McVeigh 1st Ted Bufton

2nd Evie Pickford 2nd Mikey Slabbert

3rd Eadie Tigges 3rd Will Farquharson

Prep

Girls Boys

1st Lydia King 1st Rihaan Golwala

2nd Evie Price 2nd Vann Creek

3rd Tilda Giles

Library

- Kym Dempsey