My daughter raised the issue of electronic devices in her bedroom over the Christmas holidays. It wasn't raised in a calm, formal way, like putting a subject on an agenda for a meeting, but instead in the usual teenage way of having an argument about it with her parents, having been caught using her tablet in her bedroom when we had thought she was sleeping. I have read and heard of various studies etc that say that the bright blue light emitted from these devices messes with your brain chemistry and keeps your brain stimulated rather than preparing it for sleep. That is an issue in addition to what would she be looking at or doing on her devices, late at night in her bedroom on her own? It is more complicated than that, of course. A phrase that someone once said to me pops into my head frequently during my motherhood experiences and that is, "Strict parents have sneaky children." This is so true; and perfectly demonstrated by the cause of this very argument. If someone really wants to do something, they will do it anyway but just without you knowing. And I would rather know. If we have an open relationship, if she comes across something on the internet that is confusing or interesting or... whatever and she want to talk to me about then that is a good thing. If the whole thing is done sneakily then she won't ask for fear of me saying, "When/where did you come across this?" What I want is a open, trusting relationship and for that I think the key is educating your children as to the dangers of using the internet and the pitfalls of social media rather than the strict policing of its use.
"Owls and Larks" adds further complications into the issue. Broadly speaking people can be divided into those people who wake up ready to get on with their day and then wear themselves out and feel tired and ready to sleep again at the end of the day. These are the Larks. The Owls on the other hand struggle to get out of bed in the morning, preferring a lay-in whenever possible, wake up properly sometime in the middle of the morning, start to get tired in the evening but suddenly come awake again and don't want to go to bed. In our house my youngest daughter and I are Larks and my eldest daughter and husband are Owls. It is hard for a Lark to accept the Owl's "weird" behaviour and they constantly want to "fix" it and think that if they can just be sensible enough to get an early night then everything would be OK in the morning. Larks have a tendency to lord their "virtuous" behaviour over the Owls, frowning over the Owls' slow start to the day and failing to appreciate their ability to function late at night (or even during the night) when the average Lark finds in hard to even string a few words together into a coherent sentence.
So, I entered the "I should be allowed electronic devices in my bedroom" debate armed with the "knowledge" that: blue light messes with your brain chemistry, the internet is a bad and scary place for young people and should be strictly policed, and that she should get an early night in order to get enough sleep. My daughter, on the other hand held the view that the light emitted from her devices was no worse than that from the TV we watched right up to bedtime and that she has even managed to fall asleep whilst watching a YouTube video on her tablet, that the internet is also the place of a lot of completely innocent and useful stuff and I should trust her to use it sensibly, and that she is an Owl so would never go easily into sleep but could make up for it with a lay-in. To add weight to her argument, she pointed out that we allowed her younger sister to have electronic devices in her bedroom. This was undeniably true. Her sister took her laptop and/or tablet up to her room on a Friday and Saturday night in order that in the morning she could quietly use it when she woke up so as not to disturb the rest of the sleeping household.
This was a bit of a bombshell moment for me and suddenly shone a spotlight on my "Lark-like" bias. It seemed it was perfectly fine for my youngest daughter to have hours of unsupervised internet use on electronic devices in her bedroom just because she was doing it during early morning daylight hours. In contrast, I had seen unsupervised internet use last thing at night as a bad thing... why... because it was dark? I couldn't even argue it was stopping her getting enough sleep if she slept in for a couple of hours in the morning instead. Where was the actual difference between her sister getting 10 hours of sleep between 9pm and 7am and her getting 10 hours sleep between 12 and 10am? Even as I write this I still feel instinctively as if that is wrong but I cannot deny my daughter's logic. I was left in the argument like a landed fish, trying to sup for breath. I had no logical counter-argument and was left with just "because it's the right thing to do" or "because I said so," comebacks. I shut my mouth and retreated for a consultation with the wise old "Owl" who could better empathise with the sleep patterns.
The next day we sat her down and had a discussion about this. We had decided, ultimately, that she was right but we wanted to establish the ground rules. This is also better than having a child sneaking around behind your back when you can't enforce any kind of rules on their unknown behaviour. The rules mainly involved the cut off times and how these would vary during school holidays, weekends and school nights but we also discussed what she should and should not do on the internet in her room. It is, of course, impossible to police so it is all about education and trust. But, once again I was left like that poor landed fish when she told me that mainly she enjoyed watching YouTube recipe videos. All that out-of-portion worry about the dangers and evils of the internet and she was actually watching a Tesco recipe for cheese souffle or some fairly cool looking guys in an equally cool looking flat, hanging out together to cook and eat noodle soup! You see, if YouTube and tablets had been a thing when I was her age I would probably have been doing the same thing! Never mind the dangers and evils of the internet for young people, it is a dangerous and misleading place for well-meaning parents seeking advice and guidance!
So the first recipe we cooked during the Christmas holidays was cheese souffle. Shortly after that she announced that she wanted to try potato croquettes and when we had mash potato leftover from that she asked if she could use it to make doughnuts. It was a leap of faith to go against the current parenting advice and my own instincts but, for the moment at least, I am glad I did as they were damned fine souffles!
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