Hello, and welcome back to Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. We're going to be talking today about alternatives to screens, tablets, computers, phones, and alternatives that don't involve a heap of input from us as parents, because that's one of the hurdles, and I do understand it and empathize, is that when there is an iPad or a tablet around, so easy just to plug your kid in and that's it. They take care of themselves, and we all know they kind of zombie out, and we all know that, well, most of us know that's not a great idea, but in the day-to-day reality of family life, we can get on and do what we need to do, and it's often family-related, getting a meal on the table, getting the house cleaned, you know, getting the clothes folded, whatever it is, but we can move into a bug-free zone where we don't get bugged all the time, so what are some alternatives that are just that bit healthier? And for these alternatives, I'm going to, there are a ton of things, but for these ones, I'm going to turn to the reading age child.
Of course, not every child's reading age, but for the reading age child, a really helpful one is to get some books on tape, well, they're digital books now, aren't they, but you know what I mean, stories, some of my favorite are from Sparkle Stories, the company called Sparkle Stories, as in S-P-A-R-K-L-E, Sparkle, and beautiful stories, beautifully read, and at a slower pace. Now, these stories, by the way, are for children of all ages, you know, especially sort of three and four years old up. Now, I've got to say right at the outset that I'm not the hugest fan of digital stories, so much nicer to sit with a child and actually read or tell a story, but in terms of compromise, if we can't do that, then really high-quality stories, recorded stories, are at least stories, and at least they're not screens.
For children who are of reading age, however, you can find stories, recorded stories, but of a special kind, and what I'm suggesting is that you look for a story, and you look for a story in particular where it is of a book. Now, of course, the story is going to be something you feel comfortable with, or the reading of a book. So, it's a digitally recorded reading, of course, but it's of a book that you don't mind, you've looked at it, you think, okay, that's all right.
So, you get a hold of the recording through, you know, Audible or many different sources that have these book readings now, and that you can plug a child into that and have some free time. So, that's the first step, but for children of reading age, what you can do is to take the reading and let them listen to it and limit the time. It's important, you know, that it's sort of 45 minutes to an hour max, that it doesn't become obsessional.
A child doesn't just walk around with earbuds in for hours and hours and hours a day, but it does give you that hour, longer if you need it, but I recommend not much more than that, but it does give you that time to get on with things and do what you need to do. There it is, the built-in babysitter, but here's where there's another couple of steps that can be really helpful. One other step for a reading age child is then to turn it off after an hour, and then step one, after listening to it, is to, that night, take up the reading of that actual book yourself as a child goes to bed.
Now, the reason I'm suggesting this for a reading age child is this, that they listen to it, then you read it, and then the following day, encourage them to read it. So, it moves from listening to it, to having it read out loud, to having them read it, and then it builds a bridge back into reading, and there are a bunch of parents who have commented that the child had basically stopped reading or never really got to reading much at home because of the availability of screens, and what this is doing is taking the screen, which is very passive, of course, using, plugging them then into a book on tape, which is still passive, but it's not, but it's not so visually overwhelming. A child still forming inner pictures, to their new reading, where a child forms even more inner pictures, to them reading where the from ourselves, you know, when we're growing up reading books.
Now, for a non-reading age child, it can still be television, very overwhelming, very passive, but at the same time, highly addictive, that the jury is in on that one, right? That's not, I hope, too controversial for anyone to hear, that it's TVs can be, and computers, and tablets, and so on, can be hugely addictive, to then book on tape, and then they're not going to be able to read the book themselves, but you can then pick up the reading at night. So there isn't that final step back into reading, but there is that next step into you telling the story. For many non-reading age children, you can then encourage them to take their paper, and crayons, and paints, and pencils out, and actually draw the story, and talk to them about it, and it may be worth spending five minutes, and siphoning them into drawing.
In other words, start the drawing off, and talk to them, put the materials out there, and talk to them about the story, and then have them draw it, and say, now when you finish that drawing, why don't you bring it right on over, and show me the result? Still the same healthy social-emotional development that gets them away from screens. It's still, in terms of brain development, way, way, way healthier than sitting for hours plugged into a screen. It still gives you the time to get on with things, and most of all, it's just plain healthy for the child, but it does it in a series of strategic steps, so that you're not just turning off the tablet, turning off the screen.
If that's going to be overreaching for you, I, of course, understand that, but this is a way of walking the child back, so first the screen, from the screen to a digitally recorded story, from the digital story to the read story, from the read-out-loud story to the reading him or herself story, or the drawing of the story for a non-reading-age child, and that's the simple progression. I want to add one more footnote to this, is that there is another step, and this step, I think, is a fundamentally healthy one, in that you can then start looking out books from basically pre-mid-70s and earlier. Those books, those classic children's books from the 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, these books move much slower.
The storylines are deeper. They don't cater for attentionally damaged children. I don't want to say like Harry Potter, so I will avoid that kind of controversy, but there you are.
Because many modern books now are written to directly compete against television and against flashing, fast-paced images, and so they kind of move really fast, and they're really, really exciting, and they keep the child up in this semi-vigilant arrested state. But if you walk children back in this way, you'll allow the adrenaline and cortisol and dopamine, which are hormones that flood a child's system with much of modern programming, and I've got to say, quite a few of the super-popular children's books now, and they walk the child back so that by the time you get to a child then reading, you can then, once the fight or flight, freeze or flock, that constant adrenaline, pleasure and reward, and all that's involved in a lot of television programming, a lot of gaming, and even a lot of modern books, once you've managed, you've done this, these four steps I spoke about, then you can put in the hands of a child, or read out loud for a child, a much more child-friendly, paced book, so that you can then be reading C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, to younger children. You can then be looking at reading, you know, Farmer Boy, and that kind of series.
You can then be reading out loud to your child books that are just simply slower paced, because you've basically walked your child back from the expectation that there is going to be huge excitement on every other page of a book, or if not every page of a book. Some of the hugely popular children's books that I've looked at, I've actually traced, you know, looked at it objectively, and in some of them there is an explosion of interest at the end of the end paragraph, at the end of every single page, otherwise the child will just close the book and not read it. Now that is just not the way the world works.
It truly isn't, and to wire a child to expect that is just to build in attentional problems, to build in behavioral problems, to build in a child continually feeling bored and claiming boredom unless there's a high level of pleasure and reward going on. So in order to build and walk a child back to being able to have a normal neurological development, try these steps, and then the end step is either to read a child a slower paced book, and there are some modern books that are slower paced. Look at some of these very, very exciting modern books, have a look at them, there's probably some kicking around, and then look at a book like Swallows and Amazons, or look at a book like C.S. Lewis, or Ursula Le Guin's The Wizard of Earthsea, for example, for older children, for, you know, nine, ten, eleven year olds.
If you look at these books and compare them with these very modern, fast-paced books, usually about all kinds of sorcery and wizardry and all this kind of stuff, you'll see that the pacing of them is fundamentally different. Now, I don't want to just trash modern fast-paced books, because some people say, and rightly so, but it's at least better than a screen, or some people will claim they're very, very well written, and again, I'm not a fiction writer, rather, I write non-fiction, so I don't want to get into too much judgment here, but one thing I do know for sure is that these books that I've mentioned have a child not release the levels of dopamine, not release the pleasure and reward hormone. There are high points, for sure, but the high points come after a sort of fairly beautifully written build-up, and then comes this high point, and then life goes back to normal, and then comes a high point.
That is like life itself. That reflects real life, and therefore what the children are hearing you read them, or if they're reading age, hearing you read them and then reading themselves, is much more natural, normal, and it will have them accept the pacing and the rhythm of normal life, rather than having them come back claiming a boredom, and then the cycle sets up again, so you put an iPad back in their hand, because they're not bored, because then the dopamine release adrenaline cortisol happens all over again. If you're interested in breaking that cycle, then what I've just suggested, these walk back steps, ending in slower paced literature, either modern day slower paced, or particularly when books were being written that didn't have to compete against very, very fast paced children's programming.
Then you'll have a child on your hand that will be a lifelong reader, that is not so bored, whose neurological development will be healthy, and you still get the time to spend doing what you need to do. Okay, big subject, hey? Hope that's helpful. Okay, bye-bye for now.
