We instinctively know what is best for our children and ourselves which doesn’t explain hours spent on pinterest, watching bad TV or eating tons of chocolate.  But we do need to tap into those instincts as we raise our little ones and keep our time with the screen as little as possible.

An article in the New York Times has some interesting findings.  It talks about a nerve that connects the heart to the brain.  This nerve was always thought of as static and unchanging.  It is a nerve that sends signals back and forth from the brain to the heart and part of those signals are how we interact with other humans.  The nerve changes depending on how much time we spend with other people. So a quick synopsis of the article says that the more human interaction we have, the healthier hearts we have. 

It goes way deeper than that, but as a parent, we don’t always have time to read about the intricacies of our nervous system.  What we do have time to find out is that we need to get off our phones when we are around our babies.  They have found that babies who are breastfed with distracted mothers have more behavior and now cardiovascular problems.  

So we can start tuning into our babies and kids starting tomorrow.  It will make us healthier and our children happier and healthier.

Two ideas that you can implement tomorrow are to have a a “no devices at the table” rule where if you eat a meal together as a family, under no circumstances can a phone be used.  (Trust me, situations will arise that a phone will seem obligatory, but you can live without it).  The other idea is to have an entire unplugged day.  I love this idea, haven’t implemented it myself, but would love to someday.

This may seem like small stuff, but all of this technology is very new. We don’t know what it is doing to us, but we do know how important we are to each other; especially as children and parents.

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