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I scream, you scream: No screen

Pune Mirror | Jan 18, 2020, 06.00 AM IST

Amte-Karajgi with her son Sharvil

Granddaughter of social activist Baba Amte, Dr Sheetal Amte-Karajgi on how she helped her six-year son
beat his smartphone addiction

Screen addiction among children is a global phenomenon now and the speed with which it has consumed our
lives is certainly cause for concern. Attempts to de-addict are met with resistance, relapse and even suicide.

Can you imagine your life without your mobile? It has become the fourth essential part of life after food, water,
and oxygen. We are drowning ourselves in data that we are consuming every day.

When I met development pediatrician Dr Samir Dalwai in September 2019, he claimed that screens are more
addictive than drugs because there is no escape from them. Screens are everywhere — in our homes, schools and
society. Screens are responsible for the attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). And only parents are to
be blamed.

I was guilty of subjecting my sixyear-old to more screen time than he could probably handle. Sharvil was born in
2013, a three weeks premature baby. I started documenting everything related to him — from his sleep pattern to
his interaction with family members — using my mobile camera.

When he was a year-and-a-half old, I gave him acrylic colours and a canvas. He made beautiful abstracts. We
took him to different countries to make him accustomed to various foods. At three, we gave him his first puzzle.
I have bought him nearly 30 puzzles after that. He plants trees — has planted nearly 93 so far. He has a personal
library of around 200 books, with encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs, sharks and space. He was a great child.

But we made one mistake. To teach him nursery rhymes, we showed the ‘Old McDonald’ — and all the other
nursery rhymes — on YouTube. He would get engrossed in that for hours. Later, he started demanding the screen
to eat his meals. Nobody told us it was a trap. We exposed him to all sorts of screen options — TV, mobile, iPad,
and computer. And we did not care much. He was still obedient and playful till the age of four.

When he was five, his addiction grew stronger. Back from school, he would throw his bag on the couch and
watch Peppa Pig, as our house help fed him. Sometimes, he would eat four rotis, sometimes nothing. Later Dr
Dalwai explained that his digestive juices had stopped secreting. He wasn’t looking at food, he wasn’t smelling
it. He would never eat with his own hands. He had become lazy and would not do his homework. His tantrums
would last for hours, which was unnatural for him.

One day, I found things worth Rs 68,000 in my Amazon cart. A few days later, I received an OTP to make a
transaction. He was memorising what I was doing on Amazon. I approached Dr Dalwai, who asked me a few
questions, which I had no answers to — what is he losing as a child? How many friends does he have? Is he
street smart? Can he diplomatically handle your relatives?

I, then, understood the gravity of the issue. That day, I told my husband and in-laws that for the next few days I
am going to attempt an experiment with Sharvil and got them on the same page. I sat Sharvil down and told him:
‘For the next eight days, I shall be available for you every minute. We are going to have a lot of fun. But you
cannot touch any screen. I shall keep you busy. Do this because I love you and I need more time from you’. He
didn’t understand. But he trusted me.

From the next morning, I took complete charge of his routine. Right from getting him ready for school to putting
him to sleep, I controlled every activity. Children get bored easily and need a change of people too. So we started
it as a relay race. All his old games were brought out of the cupboard and spread everywhere. After Sharvil was
back from school, I made him sit at the dining table and told him a story with him as the hero. While doing that, I
asked him to eat with his own hands. It was a gamble but he managed to eat one roti with pickle. The next
activity was playing in the mud with excavators. That occupied him for a few hours. His grandparents got him
games such as Uno and Dobble, which he found exciting. During dinner, I made him eat with his hands while I
told him stories. During bedtime, I read him a story.

On the second day, we played ‘No Screen!’ Anybody who was caught using a screen would have to put it down.
He loved that game because that gave him a lot of power. If he screamed ‘No Screen’, everybody would put their
mobiles down and switch off the TV.

Three days later, he found me using my phone to send an email and had a relapse. When he screamed ‘no
screen’, I didn’t put it down. It was a breach of trust. That tantrum lasted for a few hours. I apologised twice but
didn’t allow him access to any screens.

On the fourth day, he completed a 300-piece puzzle in 3.5 hours with his grandmother. He played Uno and won
25 times.

We would work or browse when he was not around. Once he returned from school, all screens were turned off.
We started eating at the dining table with him, avoiding the TV set. We started painting again. He made
wonderful abstracts, reigniting his passion for painting.

It took me just eight days to make him forget his obsession with screens. Days, weeks and months have passed.
Sharvil does not look at screens any more. When he wants to hear a story, I play it on a speaker because I have
recorded some stories, which he likes. I even taught him how to write stories. We have two dogs and he plays
with them all the time like siblings.

Sharvil has more friends now. We talk a lot. He plays a lot. He gets dirty while playing in the mud. He fights. He
writes letters. He doesn’t have time for screens. What worked is my innate faith in meaningful conversations,
trust and honesty. It wasn’t easy, but we did it. And so can you. Here’s how:

Write a family charter

A family charter is an agreed set of principles and practices a family should follow. All family members should
sit down together and express their expectations of each other in a clear manner. The rule is children should have
the most say and elders the least. Speaking should be inversely proportional to age. This will make it more
participative. Avoid fostering your views on children, blame games and quarrels. The family charter is like a
sacred document, which can be preserved for generations. A part of the family charter could be that everyone
should sit at the dining table and have a meal together, with no screens allowed near the table.

Replace TV with stories

Pull all your imagination into creating stories about your child. Make him or her, the hero of the story and add a
lot of weird, funny, extraordinary things to that. Record it on your mobile when telling it for the first time. The
child would like to listen to it time and again. Do not open your screen and browse while the child is listening to
the story. Otherwise a child will feel betrayed and not pay attention to the story. If you can’t create stories, then
just read out stories from various books and play them on a Bluetooth speaker whenever your child wants to hear
them.

Get creative

Give them acrylic colours, painting knives and a canvas at an early age and let them play with them endlessly.
Buy a plastic mat and a few cheap clothes exclusively for the painting activity. Do not prescribe to any picture
form. Never give any screen to copy the picture. Colours, especially done in abstracts can break the typical
perfectionist mindset of parents and children. Let them just feel the colours, smell them, waste them. Let them
enjoy the process and ask them not to be perfect at it.

Choose toys which are age appropriate

Choose media that is flexible, can be broken and made again. A child plays using all his five senses. He will
throw it, he will taste it, he will listen to the sound, he will see its colours and then he will play with it. Buy clay.
Clay is a flexible medium which allows your child to be more imaginative, flexible and creative. I bought an
excavator and a dumper for my child. He fell in love with the whole concept of digging, lifting and emptying.
Now he has a fleet of excavators and has still has not lost interest.

Don’t bother about cleanliness

Keep a wall free for your child and ask him to draw on it. Your child’s development is more important than your
image as a tidy person.

Converse with your children

Take your child out for at least 15 minutes a day and talk to him. Ask him about nature and how does he sees the
forms. Make him see things through a magnifying glass. Give him a small basket to collect 10 flowers and 10
leaves of different species of plants and ask him to learn their names. Keep your phone away during this time. If
you want to document, use a regular camera, not a smartphone.

Create a cosy corner

Create a space for you and your child where you two can sit comfortably. It could be your bed, for instance. If
there is no such corner where you two can intimately chat, then talk to the family about it and get one made.
These corner chats are fruitful. Children love secret chats in hidden places. Create those spaces for them.

Discipline yourself about your own screen addiction

See the apps you are using. If you feel guilty about it, it’s great. Use that guilt to control your own addiction. Use
Zen modes to control the urges. Children emulate you. If parents don’t behave, the children won’t either.
Eradicate your own fear

Get rid of the fear that your child will lack in skills, if screen time is limited. Look at yourself. Our generation
had no screens but we have still fared well.

Be a friend to your child

Children believe in mutual admiration and trust. They hate fear. Talk to them and request them because you need
their time. Make them feel superior. Be prepared for tantrums and relapses but ensure that no screen is given to
them during that time.