Parents Do NOT Need to Text Their Kids During the School Day

parents do not need to text their kids during the school day.

I've heard from a lot of educators in response to my previous video about the cell phone detector that parents insist on being able to reach their kids at all times throughout the school day.

And I believe it.

I believe that that is the message that we are hearing from parents, that a lot of people are being very loud and clear about what their preferences are.

But I also believe that as educators, we have a professional obligation to take a stand for what is necessary for our work to succeed with students.

And I think It's becoming increasingly clear that banning cell phones during the school day, keeping kids off of their devices when they are not supposed to be on their devices, is absolutely essential for education as well as for students' own mental health, for their friendships, for them to be able to talk to their peers in a normal way and not just be glued to their phones all day.

And this excuse that, oh, I need to be able to reach my child has now become almost universal.

Everybody's saying that.

And it's just not true.

Like, you literally don't need to be able to reach your child at all times.

And if you think that you do, something is off.

So I think as educators, we have to be among the first and loudest voices to say, no you do not need to be able to reach your child at all times and if you are doing that you're actually interfering with their education you're actually harming them and ruining their chances at a normal life in some you know to some degree by constantly needing to be in contact with them you are distracting them from their learning You are normalizing the sense of anxiety that I need to constantly be able to check in and ask questions and update you on information.

Like literally all of us who are educators today or older adults today were raised without our parents having that ability.

And I don't want to make too small, too much of a we turned out fine argument.

But the research is really clear now that this is actually a bad practice to constantly contact your child during the day.

And certainly to create an excuse for your child to be distracted by everything else that their phone can give them throughout the day instead of focused on learning.

So let me know what you think about this.

I think we've really got to push back against parents and say like, no, you don't need to contact your child.

And if there's an emergency, like they always mention, oh, what if there's a school shooting?

Well, if there's an emergency, you are not going to solve that emergency as a parent by texting your child or calling your child.

And I get that people feel like, know this might be my last chance to talk with my child but we also need to remind people like how remote those odds are that anything is going to happen to their child and also if we have a rule against cell phones we can kind of overlook that if there is a real emergency like we don't have to act like there is constantly an emergency in order to run the educational environment we can let kids get their cell phones out if there is a real emergency they're probably going to do it anyway but we also have to keep in mind like how do we keep people safe during an emergency well like we don't want everybody coming up to the school to pick up their kid while we're in a lockdown so This is just a terrible argument that I need to be able to reach my kid at all times during the day.

And we've got to push back against that argument from parents and keep cell phones off during the day.

Let me know what you think.