Today’s team review is from Brittany, she blogs here https://brittthereader.blogspot.co.uk/
Brittany has been reading How To Manage Techno Tantrums by David Boyle & Judith Hodge
Techno Tantrums: 10 Strategies for Coping with your Child’s Time Online
- Title: How to Manage Techno Tantrums: 10 Strategies for Coping with your Child’s Time Online
- Author: David Boyle and Judith Hodge
- Published: 2017
How to Manage Techno Tantrums: 10 Strategies for Coping with your Child’s Time Online is a parenting self-help book about how to manage your child’s screen time.
Image via Goodreads.
The stated purpose of Techno Tantrums is “to set out the knowledge that is out there and list some of the strategies that other parents have used.” The authors hope is for the book to be empowering to parents, and I believe it succeeds. It is a quick read that’s organized into four sections and an introduction. The book begins with a fascinating hook. As it turns out there are many high ranking tech and gadget professional who strictly regulate the use of screen time in their own homes.
Where I think the book could most improve is in the first two sections, especially the section “From Fasting to Chilling”. An overview is given of several common concerns about the impact of too much screen time. Techno Tantrums does a great job of citing specific studies and each study’s results. I appreciated having some understanding about the scientific evidence for each concern raised, including cutting off social interaction, suppressing emotion, decreasing the ability to relax, etc. But overall I found the explanation for each of these issues too cursory to be worthwhile. A full page or two of discussion about each issue would allow the reader to feel more informed about the current social research and whether or not it is conclusive.
An entire section is dedicated to the experiences of other parents who try to promote restricted or healthy screen time for their children. I found this section to be incredibly helpful, and I plan to revisit it repeatedly as my child continues to grow. The book ends with an outline of ten strategies parents can use to setup a home life where screen time is regulated. It is stressed that parents must follow these regulations as well. For example, if phones should be off and charging for the night by 8pm, that means everyone’s phone in the family needs to be off and charging, including mom and dad.
I have not come across any other books on this topic before. How to Manage Techno Tantrums clarifies that it is not about online safety, but rather about how the manage the time in front of online games and screens. It is an excellent resource for parents looking for ideas about where to start.
Star Rating: 4/5 Stars
Techno Tantrums: 10 Strategies for Coping with Your Child’s Online Time is available to buy as a paperback or an e-book from Amazon UK or Amazon.com.
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Thanks for reading! This is another #RBRT review. Thanks to Sue Fuest for sending me a free e-book copy to read. If you enjoyed this review, please share or follow for more book reviews.
-Brittany
Book Description
This book argues that parents have been abandoned to deal with the lure of the online world alone, the games and social media, with advice about safety but no other support. This is a guide to help navigate the research and pitfalls, written by parents for parents.
They face the sheer power of the internet companies all by themselves, fighting for influence over their children’s minds. When schools and governments alike encourage children to spend their lives online, yet many of the internet founders themselves – including Steve Jobs himself – rigorously restricted their own children’s online access time.
This isn’t a guide to online safety, which is well-covered elsewhere. It is a guide to online obsession. It helps navigate research, some of it alarming, some of it reassuring, with clarity and sanity, to help parents find a way through – so that children can avoid addiction, enjoy the world around them, but also enjoy themselves online.
About the author
David Boyle is the author of Blondel’s Song: The capture, imprisonment and ransom of Richard the Lionheart, and a series of books about history, social change and the future. His book Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life helped put the search for authenticity on the agenda as a social phenomenon. The Tyranny of Numbers and The Sum of Our Discontent predicted the backlash against the government’s target culture. Funny Money launched the time banks movement in the UK.
David is an associate of the new economics foundation, the pioneering think-tank in London, and has been at the heart of the effort to introduce time banks to Britain as a critical element of public service reform – since when the movement has grown to more than 100 projects in the UK.
He is also the founder of the London Time Bank network and co-founder of Time Banks UK. He writes about the future of volunteering, cities and business.
Rosie Amber 
Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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My kids are brought up with the knowledge that what I say goes and if I tell them they have had enough Playstation/computer/phone time, they turn it off (I do let them get to the end of their game first). Everything, including their phones have to be off by 7pm. (My phone most certainly isn’t off by that time, and this works for us)
Yes, my middle son who is autistic might of learnt the hard way when I unplugged things, but he learn’t.
I’m really not a lover of these types of books, or any type of self help books for that matter.
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I think the more technology which comes into all our lives the harder it will get for some.
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When I read the first part of the title I thought it was going to be a book to help me deal with my tantrums when technology goes wrong!
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I think we all have those Mary, my most recent was for the blue screen of death on the computer I use for all this book blogging. A Crazy couple of days here because of it.
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A much needed guide for parents and teachers.
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