On Supervision

We cannot be with our children every minute of the day. Relative to their stages of maturity and development, we gradually increase the freedoms that our children enjoy, and allow them to make decisions (and mistakes) and wear the consequences of those decisions. Perhaps this is somewhat a rite of passage where we allow our children at times to stumble, fall and get up again, without always intervening.

I have lost count of the number of books and journal articles I have read over the years on working with adolescents and young adults. Because our world changes, the advice similarly adjusts along the way. When I first started teaching, we did not have to worry about the perils of technology, and stranger danger was confined to walking home from school, or being approached in a park. Interestingly, many adolescent psychologists, neurologists, and parenting experts will tell us that the supervision we engage with our children in terms of their physical whereabouts is more vigilant than ever. Many children these days are not left unsupervised at home even when they are 16, and many are dropped off and picked up by a parent wherever they go. We have all heard the terms helicopter parent, lawnmower parent, snowplough parent and the like, and while they are sometimes an exaggeration, we worry for our children and how safe they are in their world.

The irony though remains that for many of our kids, possibly the most unsafe place they are likely to find themselves is in their own bedrooms, with their device in their hands. They have the most powerful tool at their disposal, allowing them access to complete strangers, not all of whom are who they pretend to be. This is the place where too many of our children are left under-supervised, or at worst, completely unsupervised.

I readily accept that raising a young person is tough work. It is more complex than ever, and there are competing forces that make being a gold-standard parent an almost impossible task at times. However, we cannot abrogate our responsibility in looking out for their actions, behaviours, and online lives. Too many children and adolescents have unfettered access to a device with no down time. We know that our children are using a device outside of school time for more than seven hours per day.

We must engage our parenting to the extent that it reaches into their online lives and that we are aware of who they are seeing, and talking to, and what they get up to. Many times, I have asked a parent to look at their child’s device and see what they have been accessing and they are genuinely shocked by what they see. As educators, we navigate this on an almost exponential basis because when things go awry online, they nearly always blow up at school. Whatever transpires online is met head on at school where students come into face-to-face contact with each other.

As parents, in the full knowledge that nearly every other parent grapples with these issues, I implore you to consider the following:

1. Do not allow your child to have a phone or any device in their bedroom after a reasonable hour each evening. Sleep for an adolescent (10-12 hours per night) is crucial.
2. Actively supervise your child’s online activity. If you refuse to do so, at some stage, there will likely be something to unpack or to deal with.
3. Delay the age at which they get a smartphone or other device. This applies especially to students in Years 7 and 8. The usual response from parents here is that they need a phone to contact home to get a message re pick up, etc., They actually don’t need a phone. They are able to get themselves home quite capably without a mobile.
4. Phones are banned at JPC during the school day. I still get parents even telling me that they contacted their child at lunch time, or in class time. Please do not. Your child should not have their phone on their person during the school day.
5. Actively encourage holidays, days, weekends away from devices. Play board games, go camping, go bike riding, canoeing, skiing, walking…indeed anything that does not require a screen/device.
6. 
   My favourite: no phones at the dinner table. Have the evening meal together and at the table. Talk to each other instead. (It is still a rule at my house with my adult children). 
7. Take some comfort in the knowledge that this stuff is hard to tackle and that you are not alone.

Supervision takes many forms. Although we cannot and should not be everywhere all the time, we can take a risk mitigation approach to our supervision. That would suggest to me that our vigilance should be more attuned to our children’s device use, than their physical whereabouts. Without putting too fine a point on it, in my mind, the most dangerous place they inhabit is the world of the internet.

The most life-giving place that nurtures their spirit and their soul is in real time, with real people, and with those who love them.

Dr Craig Wattam