April 2019 | Relay Blog

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Raising Creative Children is Easier than You Think

April 25, 2019/in Digital Parenting

There’s a famous study in which kids are asked to come up with how many uses they can think of for a paper clip. How many uses can you think of for a simple paper clip?

Some kids say things like “fishing hook” or “back scratcher.”

Thousands of kids were involved in this study and based on how many ideas they could devise, they were ranked on how well they exemplified divergent thinking. That is, how well could they look at a problem with novel, creative solutions. Divergent thinking means the ability to find multiple solutions to a problem.

What percentage of typical 5-year-olds score in “genius” level for divergent thinking?

The answer: 98%!

By the time they reach high school, only 12% were ranked as “genius” level on divergent thinking.

This study begs the question: what happens between kindergarten and high school that explains this dramatic decline in this type of creativity called divergent thinking? The children in this study, of course, experience many things in the intervening years. The authors point out, however, that the primary experience they all have is that they are taught over and over that there is just one right answer to every problem. In school, at home and most everywhere else, children are formed to believe there is one right answer, one right solution to a problem.

Of course, there is a need for this type of formation in life. We wouldn’t get very far with formal education of our children if we taught them that all answers were right. We know that children have to understand that in some situations (e.g., math, writing, etc.) that there is just one right answer.

But what about creativity and this ability to think divergently about solutions to problems? Should we care about this?

In the big picture of the world that our kids will inherit, I think clearly the answer is “yes.” Creative thinking is what solves big problems. Thinking outside the box, looking at multiple solutions–these are the thinking skills that kids will need to solve the complex problems of the future.

As parents, there are things we can do to help raise creative children, even as they experience formal education.

Foster Unstructured Play

So much of our kids’ days are structured, rule-driven and controlled by adults. While there is a need for structured activities and learning, kids also need plenty of time for unstructured play that is not managed by adults.

This doesn’t mean chaos, it means creativity. Left on their own, kids will often devise their own games, rules and ways to keep the play lively and fun. I have seen this with my own kids numerous times. When we have a group of friends over to play, we just allow space for the kids to run around and see what emerges. Usually they develop some game or play of their own, with their own rules.

Have you ever seen a group of kids playing “groundies” on the playground? This game seems to be a universal one that all kids learn from other kids at a young age. I have no idea where it developed, but most kids just inherently learn it on the playground. The rules are made by kids, but all kids usually know the terms. It’s sort of amazing to watch how kids regulate themselves and their behavior when given the space to do so.

This is the beauty of unstructured play. Research backs up the necessity and usefulness of unstructured play for our children and the development of creativity. Studies have shown that kids who spend more time in unstructured play tend to rank higher on measures of executive function skills. These are the skills like planning, self-control, attention and memory that help kids succeed in all areas of life. While these may sound “uncreative” and boring, these are the foundations of creativity. Without these basic skills, the imaginative, fun, risk-taking and problem-solving of creativity is not possible.

Limit Hovering

The term “helicopter parenting” has made the rounds in the media for the past few years and made parents feel guilty about yet another aspect of parenting. In reality, however, helicopter parenting can be a real deterrent to fostering creative children, if it’s taken too far.

Parents often joke about being a “helicopter parent” when they bring their child’s forgotten lunchbox to school in time for lunch or similar scenarios. Helicopter parenting becomes problematic when it involves rescuing kids from failure or disappointment.

Allowing children to experience (some) failure really is a creative-building experience. Imagine if Thomas Edison had never experienced the hundreds of failures at creating the lightbulb? It may never had been invented, or at least not by him. Failure builds creativity in the most natural way. When one choice or solution doesn’t work, we are forced to think in a new way about another possible solution. Creativity in action!

In our everyday lives, we want to limit hovering or helicopter parenting our children, but many of us have real concerns about their safety and long-term well-being. That’s where Relay is so helpful. With a Relay in hand, we can feel confident allowing our kids more leeway in playing in the neighborhood or meeting up with friends on their own. We can stay in communication with them, without hovering over their every move. The sense of freedom and confidence that kids gain by having control of their decisions and actions only fosters their positive development.

Ultimately, raising creative children has a lot more do with what we don’t do, than what we do as parents. If we cut down on structured activities and allow for unstructured play, our kids’ creativity will bloom. If we allow for a little freedom in decision-making and perhaps even a little failure in our kids, they will gain resilience and confidence. With a little patience and guidance, our kids will develop into healthy, creative adults.

Amy Webb, PhD is a scholar turned stay-at-home mom with two young sons.

With her blog, The Thoughtful Parent, she brings academic child development research into the lives of parents in the trenches of child-rearing.

She does not claim to be a parenting guru, but rather a translator of academic research into knowledge that parents can actually use.

girl sits with her brother on the couch. She ignores her parents, who observe her behavior.

Who is Teaching your Kid to Break the Family Tech Rules?

April 18, 2019/in Digital Parenting

How would you feel if someone told your kid they could do something that explicitly goes against the rules you created to keep them safe? You might feel hurt, angry, or annoyed. And your child might feel confused. Who should they believe? Who should they listen to?

When kids receive contradicting messages about what is and isn’t ok, your parental authority is undermined, making it more difficult for you to enforce rules at home. And for parents of Gen Alpha kids, it’s extremely common for other adults to have strong opinions about kids using technology (like screen time and what types of media your child consumes.) It’s already a touchy subject for parents—and it’s borderline addictive for kids born in the smartphone era. Compared to curbing screen time after it’s already out of control, enforcing bedtime seems easy.

So if someone in your life has told your child that they don’t have to play by your rules, what do you do? When faced with a situation like this, your response has to change depending on who is undermining your authority as your kid’s primary caregiver, rule-maker, and guardian. Here are the top tips from the Relay team.

Where do mixed messages come from?

Your kid can pick up on the differences between your rules and someone else’s from many different places. Here are some of the most common:

From your kids’ friends’ parents
From your co-parent or partner
From your parents, siblings, or in-laws

How to stop the contradictions and stick to the family rules

When faced with a case of undermining, your best weapon is a simple conversation. In many cases, the person teaching your kid things you don’t like has little to no idea that your rules are so different from theirs. And while there are some cases where a person might be deliberately undermining your parenting, talking it out is usually the best path towards compromise and repairing parent and child bond.

Family rules in other people’s homes

We all had that friend growing up. We loved to go to their house to play, in part because they got to eat that sugary cereal we weren’t allowed to have at home. Their parents let us watch PG-13 movies and we could stay up real late at sleepovers. And we knew that if our parents found out, they would not be happy at all.

House rules are different for every family, and we can’t assume our kids’ friends live by the same rules our kids do, especially when it comes to technology. Here are a few things that you can look for to tell if your child has been breaking technology rules at friends’ houses.

They are suddenly a big fan of a TV show, video game, or other digital media product that you have never seen or approved
They start asking for more screen time, arguing that their friend gets more than they do
They become increasingly irritable or upset when screen time is over
Their vocabulary starts to expand to include rude words you didn’t teach them
You find out about a secret social media account

If you think that your child’s bad behavior is caused by too much screen time or over-exposure to mature content at a friend’s house, there are a couple ways to approach a solution. First, you could simply have a conversation with the parent in question—not an accusatory conversation and not an argument. Just a friendly conversation about TV, internet, and app use at home.

Inform and observe

Find out what their family rules are and share your own. Usually, a parent will be more than happy to respect your wishes and respect your rules while your child is a guest in their home. How much you are willing to bend your rules out of respect to the other parent is up to you.

If you’ve already had that conversation and your rules are still undermined, make sure the playdates start happening at your house, not theirs. You can’t force someone to adopt your rules, especially not in their own home. The only certain solution is to stop sending your child there.

Different rules with a partner or co-parent

Maybe you have an authoritative parenting style and your partner or co-parent is a bit more permissive. Usually, that’s great. Many parents have different parenting styles and work together wonderfully. With the right communication, multiple different views in a household can help to create a cohesive and balanced set of rules at home, even if you are living separately.

But issues can and will arise when one parent starts undermining the others’ rules. Here are some examples of what that can look like:

They don’t enforce technology rules when you aren’t around
They reduce or negate consequences you set for rule-breaking
They disagree with or negate your rules in front of your child
They don’t set an example by following the rules themselves
They frequently “pass the buck” to you to avoid being the bad guy

All of these behaviors tell your child the same thing: as long as they appeal to the other parent, your rules don’t apply. This can lead to situations where your child acts different with one parent or cause your child to develop a habit of manipulating you against each other. Not an environment you want to live in.

Putting a stop to undermining behavior from a partner is both the simplest and most difficult situation on this list. On the positive side, you can usually feel safe bringing up the topic directly with little to no beating around the bush. On the other side, your partner’s reasoning for their actions could be coming from many different places. And as well, as an equal parent, their parenting concerns and wishes are just as valid as yours.

Educate and compromise

When you are working with your child’s other parent, the best way to proceed is to educate and compromise. This means explaining exactly why you feel your rules are necessary, and supporting with facts, like the screen time age recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. It also means listening to your partner’s reasoning for the way they feel.

Maybe your opinions are more similar than you think. When all is said and done, you might have to bend your rules a bit to get your partner or co-parent on board. And that’s ok. Every family is different, and rules work better with both parents on board, even if they’re a little bit more strict or relaxed than you’d prefer.

“Spoiled” by a family member

It’s not uncommon for a family member to have a more permissive or authoritarian parenting style than you or your partner/co-parent. In most cases, it isn’t a problem if the person respects your parental authority. As with the other cases here, the issue isn’t so much different ideology as it is a lack of respect. If a grandparent, aunt, or uncle does the following, you might have to step in:

Openly undermines your technology rules despite knowing about them
Disagrees with or questions your rules in front of your child
Tries to help your child sneak more tech time without your knowledge

A family member, while not your child’s primary guardian, is an authority figure and usually one that a child respects and looks up to. Being undermined by a family member can cause kids to act out, using the family member’s opposing viewpoint on technology as an excuse.

This kind of behavior can stir up family drama. Often, things can be settled with a simple conversation, but all families are different. Make sure you have support from your partner or co-parent while setting things right—it’s always good to have someone in your corner.

Explain and enforce

Depending on your current relationship with family, you might go about fixing this issue in a few different ways. First, you can make sure that the family member is aware of your rules. If they weren’t aware or had forgotten, remind them. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

If that doesn’t work, simply lay down the law. You are the parent and they are not. Let them know it is inappropriate to contradict your rules, especially in front of your kid. You can explain that it has a negative effect on your child, even if the family member believes what they’re doing is kind or nice.

The bottom line: this is for your child

It’s not about rules for the sake of rules. Eliminating contradictions, undermining, and mixed messages helps kids grow up less stressed and in a technologically healthy way. In the end, hearing different rules from different authority figures confuses kids and can cause defiant behavior.

Inevitably, the parent with the rules almost always ends up as the “bad guy.” That’s not fair, and it’s not ideal for kids to harbor resentment towards the people trying to keep them healthy and safe—even less ideal for adults in your life to cultivate that behavior. Timely communication is the best way to make sure all the authority figures in your child’s life are on the same page. Good luck!

Want more insight into Gen Alpha parenting? Find more posts here.

Book Review: Raising Humans in a Digital World

April 4, 2019/in Digital Parenting

Welcome to Relay’s reading list for parents. We’ll give you the TL;DR of the book—short enough to be convenient, and long enough to let you know why we love it. This is Raising Humans in a Digital World: Helping Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Technology by Diana Graber.

Before we start, here’s a quick rundown on Ms. Graber.

1. She is a fellow mom.
2. She has received awards for her work in media literacy education.
3. She co-founded a program called Cyber Civics, which teaches
4. digital citizenship in middle schools in many nations across the world.
5. She is the real deal.

What you’ll get if you read this book:

1. Scientific facts about how digital media affects kids from experts in the field

2. Realistic plans and activities that you can do at home

3. The “why” behind every recommendation and piece of advice

4. Heartwarming, powerful anecdotes about real kids navigating this path

5. Multiple points of view from the screen time argument—how tech hurts and how it helps

Top 5 takeaways for parents

Raising Humans in a Digital World is organized into three sections: A Solid Foundation, A Sturdy Structure, and A Vibrant Community. It won’t surprise you that the metaphor here compares preparing your child for the digital world with building a house. Through the book, Graber guides you through each phase of building your child’s tech skills and responsibilities with facts, anecdotes, fun activities, and sound advice.

Instead of breaking down the book section-by-section (Diana Graber does that beautifully,) here are the top 5 lessons I learned while reading.

1. Fear is not our friend—media literacy is

Many parents have heard horror stories about kids and the internet. And it seems easy to keep kids safe online by scaring them away from social media, YouTube, and gaming altogether. But easy doesn’t always mean effective. And in this case, using scare tactics with kids usually backfires.

Not only will fear tactics stop kids from learning the media literacy skills to help them avoid scary experiences, it also fails to stop them from using the internet—instead, they learn to be sneakier online. They may hide their activity from you or lie about what they do at friends’ houses. When parents (and teachers, and any adult mentors) use fear as a way to control behavior, kids won’t be afraid to keep using digital media—they’ll just be afraid to ask for help when they need it, which can compromise their online safety.

Rules about digital media aren’t that different from any other rule at home—we ask our kids not to talk to strangers in real life. Asking them not to give out personal information online isn’t much different. We don’t have to treat digital media like the boogeyman, but we can’t let kids run wild with it any more than we would let them with any other non-digital behavior.

2. You are your child’s primary role model and teacher

But you knew that already. The lessons you teach can be intentional, but many times they’re not. From infancy, the amount of time parents spend looking at screens (and not at their kids) has a real and measurable impact on children. And as kids get older, your technology habits are an example of what normal internet and screen use look like. So healthy screen habits, like screen-free meals and binge-free weekends rub off—and so do their opposites.

In addition to your own habits, you can help your kid navigate the digital world in age-appropriate ways. Diana Graber calls this creating “digital on-ramps,” where you can co-view media, learn how to use the internet for research, and build a strong foundation of knowledge for your child and trust within the parent-child relationship.

When you’re a digital mentor, your child knows that you won’t get mad if they come to you with questions, admit that they made a mistake, or encountered something disturbing online. Cultivating that trust is special and if maintained, can help your child avoid some of the more negative online experiences kids can encounter.

3. Keep in mind your child’s developmental stage

The human brain doesn’t finish developing until we’re 25 years old, and screens can shape the way kids’ brains develop from an early age. From ADHD to anxiety and depression, screen time and internet use can be impactful in all the wrong ways if used too early, too often, and without proper training and supervision. For young children, the ADA had written guidelines to guide parents. But for tweens and teens, the rules are muddy.

Teens (and kids, too) aren’t fully able to think through consequences before making decisions—their frontal cortex, the part of the brain that would usually help them think about that stuff, is still a construction zone. They aren’t able to fully understand how their actions could make other people feel, and that means they are likely to post something on a social network that makes another person feel bad or something that could impact the online reputation important to college admissions and job opportunities for the rest of their lives.

Diana Graber describes it this way: teens are able to understand and respect right and wrong as rules to follow, but don’t necessarily have the empathy necessary to comprehend the morality behind those rules—so it’s important to make sure kids have strong media literacy skills before you ease off the parental controls (and ideally before they own their own smartphone.)

4. Balance quality media with offline fun

When you look online, you often see a couple of parental camps when it comes to technology. There are the screen free parents and the techie parents. One tries to keep kids away from screens almost entirely, while the other has no issue with TV, tablets, phones, etc.

You often see parents in each camp disagreeing with each other. Most of us actually fall somewhere in the middle, and that’s a good thing. As a middle school Cyber Civics teacher, Diana Graber has seen a lot of parenting styles and is able to point out the merits and flaws in both screen time extremes.

Like most absolutist rules in parenting, denying kids screen time altogether often leads to rebellion, sneaking around, and secret-keeping. On the other hand, giving your child a device and letting them “go nuts” is a risky move. Both extreme ends of the spectrum actually lead to similar results: unsupervised screen time with no room for parents to teach kids about safety, privacy, and online etiquette.

Graber recommends taking a balanced approach: you can’t pretend that your kid will be willing or able to avoid the internet until their teen years, and even if they do, they’ll be walking into their digital lives completely unprepared. Introducing technology and online platforms gradually and with supervision is key. That way your child feels included socially—or included enough not to go behind your back—and has a digital mentor to teach them how to stay safe.

On the other side of the equation, offline activities are valuable for their own sake. Unstructured play and outdoor activities help kids’ brains develop in ways that digital media can’t. If your child gets a healthy mix of both, you’re generally on the right track.

5. Technology can be a good thing

It’s easy to mistake books like this for “screens are bad” books, or “you’re parenting wrong” books. Well, this one is different. Yes, some of the anecdotes and statistics you’ll find in this book are sad and a little scary. But for every scary stat, there is a solution your family can enact. For every kid thrown into the spin cycle of social media, there is a considerate and kind young person creating media to make life better for their community and peers. You may walk away from this book shocked, but you won’t walk away sad or hopeless. It’s full of positive content that’s actionable and versatile enough to enact for your unique family.

Diana Graber is not afraid to say that technology itself isn’t a bad thing, that it can be useful and fun and helpful. That it can even be healthy if use is balanced with other healthy offline activities. This isn’t just another scary warning book. It’s not a book that shames parents who are just doing their best. It’s a guide to empower parents, informed by science and realistic about the fact that technology and the internet are unavoidable and are pretty important for functioning adults to understand.

That’s why we love this book. We hope you love it too.