Ms Hall AP Message
Ms Julie Hall
Ms Julie Hall
Welcome to Term 4! I hope you had the opportunity to spend time as a family during the holiday break. Whilst I enjoyed the downtime, it was wonderful to see students smiling and greeting each other and staff warmly as they entered the gates on Monday.
Many of the conversations I have had with parents and carers over the last decade have been about keeping young people safe and balancing their time online. Below is part of an article by Jasmine Hood Miller who is the Director of Family Engagement and Community Partnerships at Commonsense Media. I have heard many parents express self-doubts about their ability to inform and guide their child/ren through the digital landscape. Like Jasmine, I too believe that the parents and carers in our community have the capacity, but may lack the self-belief. I hope you find the advice below re-assuring and confidence boosting and if you need that bit extra, over the coming weeks there will be Family Tip Sheets to assist.
Forming Healthy Digital Habits
Teaching kids to put down their devices is like teaching them to stop eating cookies.
One cookie is fine, two cookies are OK, but if they eat the whole container while you're not looking, they're going to feel sick. It's the same with screens: A little video gaming is fine, but three hours later (when they're cranky and their eyes hurt), you're dealing with a digital sugar crash.
Handling cranky kids isn't new for parents, but when it comes to managing media and devices, caregivers can feel out of their element. With kids using technology at younger and younger ages, it may feel like they already know what they're doing when they start swiping on our phones or tablets. And, in many cases, kids may even act as a parent's tech support. So, sometimes parents and caregivers may need a reminder that they are really the experts when it comes to the full scope and lifelong impacts of digital literacy and well-being.
For example, even though I'm very comfortable with technology, my own kids can put me to shame with all kinds of tech tricks! But their tech savvy doesn't mean they understand the bigger picture—the role that media and tech play in their lives. While I truly believe we can learn plenty from kids, we adults have perspective and wisdom that kids don't.
Parenting with tech is simply parenting.
Together, we can prepare kids to build skills and habits that will help them thrive in our world of ever-evolving media and technology.
This week's tip sheet is about Healthy Habits.
Please select the link below for the tip sheet in your language of choice
Other languages (Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Russian, Tagalog, Urdu, Vietnamese)