Parents Talk with an Expert: Digital Ground Rules with Sarah Gallagher Trombley
On Monday night, October 23, Pelham Together invited Sarah Gallagher Trombley, local parent and digital parenting coach to give her workshop, “Digital GroundRules for 4th and 5th Grades” at DaniLee’s Helping Hands. Trombley delivered her message to a packed room of parents who came to take notes and get their questions answered.
Key Messages from her workshop included:
“What IS digitally appropriate for 4th & 5th graders?”
No Social Media. Generally speaking the social media apps require users to be 13 in order to sign up. If you find yourself with a preteen who is asking if they can have social media, remind them that the apps don’t allow you on if you are younger than 13 which means you would have to lie about your age.
YouTube is inevitable but make sure your kids are not watching through unrestricted accounts. You can manage parental controls across many Google products through their free Family Link app. I recommend creating a Family Account on Family Link. For this age group, sign your kid up for a supervised account, restrict the content to 9+ or 13+ and disable autoplay.
Smartwatches can be pretty great. They are not for every kid but I think Smartwatches can be a great tool for teaching independence. If not managed well they can be another gateway to the internet or a distraction so my recommendation is to use it as a tool not a toy and go as low tech as you can.
Playing Video games is fine, but it depends on the game. With this age group it is most important to know alot about the games themselves. What are their content ratings? Do they allow interaction with strangers?
It's early for a phone. I’m not going to definitively say do not give your child a phone because there are legitimate reasons you might want or need to. That said, I would recommend avoiding giving your child a phone at this age, if you can. Or at least severely limiting what they have access to.
“What should I be doing”
Be a role model- We’re all a work in progress, pretty much all the time. I believe good digital parenting starts with the examples we set. There are legitimate reasons why adults need to be tethered to their phones but there are also plenty of us with social media habits. Just remember our kids look to us to model behaviors. It's something to stay aware of.
Understand the tech- this gets more complicated when kids are older and want to be on social media — but whenever you introduce a new technology or behavior to your kid, you need to dig in and learn it too.
Get a Digital Buddy— Our kids will be interacting with other kids throughout their digital lives. I highly recommend finding at least one parent in your kid’s circle that you can buddy up with. Compare notes, sanity check your own reactions, keep an eye out for each others’ kids. You don’t have to have the same rules or beliefs in your houses to be buddies. Having at least one buddy to go through this with is way better than trying to triage in a vacuum.
Talk to your kid— Specifically I mean talk to them about the technology they are using or about to use. Name the worry, have the hard talks. But also, look for the common ground. You may loathe your child’s beloved YouTube personality but if you invest time in what your kid is interested in or find other content that you both can enjoy, it goes a long way toward building trust.
Work on trust and independence but lean in when you introduce something new. It's very common to want to just say no or lock it all down. Not only is this very hard to do, it may not be realistic. Your kid doesn’t live in a bubble. Alternatively, finding yourself in a situation where you must constantly check up for a sustained amount of time is going to wear you down. My advice is to invest the time when you introduce something new with an eye toward gradually granting more freedom as it is earned.
Group Texting.
If your kid is interested in texting their friends do the following:
Practice texting 1:1 before letting your child message his or her friends.
Explain scenarios that are likely to come up when using this technology and talk about how to handle them: sarcasm, bullying, being a bystander and feeling overwhelmed.
Monitor the texts a lot in the beginning and then less so over time. Revert if intermittent monitoring exposes problems.
Check in with your digital buddy.
And, if this technology is not working for your family— your child is being bullied, your child is anxious or overwhelmed, or you just realistically do not have the capacity to work on this right now— don’t be afraid to exit the chat. Your kid’s safety and well being are the most important thing.
Digital Parenting is a practice and we need to keep practicing it. We are so lucky in this community to have organizations like Pelham Together to help support us and our kids. You got this, parents!
To read more of Sarah’s work, you can subscribe to her free digital parenting newsletter here. You can also follow her on Instagram and Facebook @digitalmomming or inquire about digital coaching.
Handouts from the meeting:
Apple (iOS) controls
Texting Etiquette
Family Link (Google) controls