Telegraph – 26 September 2015 – Parents must police their screen time, too
…Dr Richard Graham, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, agrees. He launched the UK’s first tech addiction clinic for young people at London’s Nightingale Hospital in 2010, and believes parental fixation with technology could have a greater impact on children’s development than their own use does.
“I speak to head teachers who say they wish they could ban parental use as much as pupils’,” he says. “The child comes out of school at home time, in a great rush of excitement to see their parents and tell them all about their day. But they land in front of whoever is picking them up and instantly find themselves vying for attention with a mobile phone.
Or perhaps a child has a therapy session in a clinic like ours; they go back out into the waiting room having done good work with us and we see the parent sat there, head down looking at their phone. The parents may not even notice that the child has returned. Frankly, if parents don’t get a grip on this, then how on earth can they expect their children to?”
Read the full article here
