Tech Billionaires, their Parenting Choices and The Consumers.

We have seen these pieces do rounds across social media for ages now. They always irk me a bit.

Points to be taken into account would be as follows

1. They’re not slow poisoning our kids and saving their own, they’re dabbling in perhaps similar questions we do every day, just trying to do the best job they can at raising tiny humans

2. It is perhaps a good and more connected Parenting choice to be more involved with children themselves and not technology being the baddie!

3. The success we see is that of those parents, who grew up in a time where there was little to no technology available (like most of us!). How their strategy works or backfires will only present itself as their children grow into adults. What are their achievements? Are they geniuses as compared to THEIR peers who had access to technology? Or are they simply sailing through life on the money and empires their parents set up.

4. Even if I watch Netflix all day (stuff of dreams now though) I get a headache and a bad mood. It is but natural for the impressionable kiddies attached to screens for long to be overstimulated so yes maybe reducing screen time casually instead of forcibly rationing it is advisable. Give the child the option to walk around, eat and play in the same space as your television is and try to avoid close proximity screens such as tablets and phones. Instead cast whatever you want them to see from the phone to the television.

5. When we were kids one of our neighbour got leukaemia. I was probably six or eight. When I’d ask my mum how she got it, she would answer that she used to sit too close to the television, she got us to sit at a distance from the telly, not wrecking our eyesight. By today’s standards that’s a horrendous thing to say but the point here is we all parent in ways we know and think best. If they are keeping their kids away from tech, they probably have a ton of help at home or the liberty to take time off of work. Not everyone has that and they come across plenty of times when they need to distract kids to simply get their days running. Measuring ourselves up to a standard that is perhaps not an apples to apples comparison is not only unfair to our children but unfair to us as parents too.

Think about things before blindly following the “Billionaire Parenting”.