Parents often consider giving a mobile phone as an easy way to make children eat quickly.
“The child is not eating anything, so at least if we show the mobile, they will eat something” — this gives parents a sense of relief. But is the food you are giving really benefiting the child?
Today’s parents need to understand how our own parents used to feed us when we were little. They used to take us to the yard, show us crows, show us dogs, show us cats, tell us stories, sing songs, and similarly, while feeding us, the mother would sit face-to-face with the child, look into the child’s eyes, and communicate.
So what do we understand from this?
The child learns eye contact, learns communication, bonding with parents, and it also becomes an opportunity for the child to learn social interaction. From old times, parents have interacted most with the child during feeding time. Three or four times a day, parents would spend time communicating and playing with the child while feeding them.
A child who eats while watching a screen does not recognize their full cues or hunger cues. Because of that, the child may end up overeating, undereating, or becoming a picky eater.
A child who eats while watching a screen before bedtime gets exposed to more blue rays from the screen, and this can affect the child’s good sleep.