Should You Let Your Child Have the Phone? A Practical Guide to Stopping Nagging and Screaming

Hey, this is Ming here. Agentsofspeech.com I'm a speech therapist and today I want to talk about how to stop those screaming tantrums at home. Alright, so check this out. All right, I want to tell you guys a story. Yesterday I went to my friend's house and the children were screaming and shouting for the handphones, the phones, the cell phones, however you call it in your country. Parents ask me, is it okay to actually use gadgets as a daily means of whatever, right? Or else how are you going to go through this quarantine if you don't use gadgets? So my answer is always yes, right? You can use it. Of course you can use it. It would be unfair that your child looks at us using our phones, but they don't get to use it. And it's always tempting them when you're pressing away. And they don't get to do anything. All right? So the first things first is that you cannot be. So you gotta set a good example to your child. When you can use it, they should be able to use it. You realize that? Oh, how come my child doesn't play with like gadgets and phones and ask for it during therapy? Well, because no one's using their phones in therapy, right? No one uses it. Everyone's just looking at the same toy and having fun together. So you want to do that at home. And the real question is, how do you stop the screaming and shouting? Well, the first thing is they need to understand that there's no room for negotiation. All right? The only reason why they're screaming, shouting and crying for the mobile phones is because they believe that this will actually yield some results. It's the same with any, like, protest or anything in the world, is that if you do your part, the officials will make a response. And the officials are you. Now, you're the parents with the goods that they want. If you tell them it's a no, it's a no, it's a no, it's a solid no. Then it should stay that way no matter what. And how you do it is actually you just ignore them. This advice for ignoring has been around for a long time, all right? And so I want to share with you another story is that my client, he used to only watch the mobile phone, especially something called Baby Bust. It's a cat. If you're my client and you're watching this, you know who you are. So in the beginning, he only watched Baby Bus in the clinic room. He always wanted it. But as we used it as a Tool for therapy, meaning as a reward for him doing some work. He kind of strayed away from it because now he understands there's something in front. He needs to do something to get that it's not for free. Whenever something is for free, we take for granted. That's what happens. It's human nature. If we think that something is free and it should be our human rights, it's taken away, we get very angry. But if we make someone work for it and then we get the reward, then it's not taken for granted. They know they have to do something. This is exactly what happened with my client. And slowly we put play skills inside. All right? We put play in between the gadget time. So it's okay if you use gadget as long as you give something in front for them to do. Front load work to bargain. Okay, then let's read a book together first. Or like, okay, let's do some therapy work together first. Let's do some homework together first. And the key word is together. You don't want to leave them alone because they wanna feel supported. If it's too hard, they're gonna not wanna do it and just snatch the phone. All right? It needs to be reasonable work. Okay? If I tell you that, okay, you can have $1,000 for salary, but you have to build me a spaceship, you're not gonna do it, you're just gonna try and rob that thousand dollars from me if you really needed it, if you really wanted it, right? At the end of the day, it comes down to three things, okay? To get rid of the screaming. Number one, is that a hard no is a hard no. Whatever behavior or whatever means they use, you do not negotiate with them. A no is a no. All right? Number two is that you add a task in front to front load some work so that they understand that item is not for free. It's for sale, but it's not for free, okay? So that they know, oh, I actually have to do something to get it. Maybe I'll think about it. I don't really want it anyways. And then number three, the last one is to start playing with them. Toys and activities that are appropriate to the age. So you can go to www.agentsofspeech.com checklist to grab a bunch of toys and tools that I use. And I tell my clients to get at home when we're stuck in this quarantine right now. So with that said, hopefully what will happen is, as you say, no. You are a man and woman of your word to Your child whenever no is a no, they'll learn that no matter what they do is like, is useless. So that will help you actually communicate better with your child. Number two is when you give them work before getting something. It also teaches them that everything in the world isn't instantly gratifying. They have to do something first to get something. Okay? That's just how the world works. And when they do, like, all the screaming, shouting and begging, they're basically like a beggar, right? They're like asking for charity and donations. And you don't want that mentality to be inside your child's brain, especially if they need a lot of practice to catch up. Okay? You want to use that opportunity, seize it, to teach them stuff. Number three is you have to teach appropriate play skills to your child so that you can leave them and play with toys instead of watching on YouTube when you don't know what they're gonna press. I mean, YouTube has a very good algorithm in like, filtering all stuff that is not child friendly. All right? But somehow they're still gonna get there and you don't want them to, like, keep on watching stuff that you don't know how it's gonna be. Alright. So with that said, I think this is gonna solve a lot of the problems that you have at home. This is hard advice that I give parents and I show them at my clinic. So if you have still any more questions, I suggest you to put them down below. Also doing live videos on YouTube and Facebook. So what you want to do is to like, subscribe, comment below, subscribe so that. And also click the notification bell so that YouTube tells you whenever I go online, and I do it every morning, 9am, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Jakarta time, remember to hit that bell because I don't know where you are in the world and it's very hard for me to tell you in your time zone. All right, so I'll catch you on the next video very soon. All right, bye.