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“Unplug your kids.”
That was the message Friday, Nov. 9, of psychologist Robert Russell, who spoke in the fourth “Town & Gown” presentation by Palo Alto University.
Russell, who directs clinical training for the university that offers degrees in counseling and psychology, spoke at the Stanford Faculty Club to about 75 students and counselors.
Today’s children average nine hours a day of engagement with media, Russell said.
“Given that media exposure, you have to wonder about who is out to control the development of your child’s consciousness. Consumerism and media have led some to conclude that corporations are really now constructing the view that we, and children themselves adopt,” he said.
“This raises the specter of the vulnerability of childhood itself.”
Society’s perception of children has changed radically since 1900, when they were viewed as hardy, courageous, sturdy, wholesome, self-sufficient and capable,” Russell said.
Today, he said, kids are seen as fragile, precious, vulnerable, sickly, dependent and incapable, with more than 20 percent living in poverty and high levels of obesity and diabetes.
Kids are firmly entrenched in a “consumer culture where we’re bombarded by messages to ‘buy, buy, buy,'” Russell said.
“You have an uphill battle as adults to engage children in a developmental stage” free from the escalating electronic competition.
Russell said parents should “get your children off the couch and back into nature. Engage them in rational conversation.
“Create challenges from them that are difficult but solvable. Don’t level adversity, encourage adventure,” he said.
“Helicopter parents” make the mistake of trying to micro-manage their children and shield them from failure, stunting autonomy and independence.
“Take some control,” he said. “I talk to parents who ask me questions such as, ‘Is it a bad thing for my 7-year-old to sleep with their cell phone?’
“Yes, it is, actually,” he said.
“Unplug your kids and control it.”
Palo Alto University, founded in 1975 and known until 2009 as the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, has a campus on Arastradero Road and cooperative arrangements with the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and Stanford University.
This past June it awarded 39 PhDs, 29 doctorates in psychology, five masters degrees, 31 undergraduate degrees in business psychology and 32 undergraduate degrees in psychology and social action.
The university offers low-cost mental health services to the community through sliding-scale fees at a clinic known as the Gronowski Center.
By Chris Kenrick
By Chris Kenrick
By Chris Kenrick
I have a parent who is working toward a doctorate at this school. I have learned a bit advice from this parent who was second in command at SJUSD…
My advice: Get the “H” out of CA and to a State that ENCOURAGES LESS MEDIA OVERLOAD!!
Don’t push the idea that ” EVERY PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED ON THE INTERNET! “. That is one of the problems created by today’s parents. EVERY company markets their Offerings with the small disclaimer ” ask your parents ” to go on-line to buy,buy, BUY their product.
My answer was to change my surroundings to were a child WANTS to go outside. The TV was in the same situation half a century earlier. It was ” the perfect babysitter ” which also sold products. I still turned it off to play outside…
Schools are the marketing playground for the tech companies around here. An app is being made for everything they do at school – state capitals, long division, DNA.. And how do kids access these apps? Oh yeah, they have to have a computer or an ipad. (cha-ching!) What was so wrong with a slate tablet and a piece of chalk – there might not be musical jingles or cartoon characters popping up but it gets the job done, old school style.
No matter what someone says the ultimate power still falls on the parents. Unless the kid somehow has money of their own the parensts are the ones paying for all this nonsense.
Turn off the TV and tell your kid to go outside.
Of course no one lets their kids go outside anymore. We’re all terrified that the boogie man will get them.
When I was a kid I lived outside. My Mom wouldn’t have let me sit on the couch watching TV. She would turn it off and tell me to go outside. And I did.
The biggest problem that most research neglects is that children are bombarded with consumer items when they go to the stores these days with their parents. It’s no so much the media anymore. It’s everywhere now and a lot harder to avoid then turning of the TV.