During the holidays or for one evening, some parents entrust their children to the grandparents, with instructions on viewing rules … not always respected. And tensions are multiplying.
by brunette mauger
“Please, don’t say anything to the parents!” This petition is not that of a little boy caught in the bag, but that of a grandfather. What did he do with such serious, that one should not repeat him to his son and his daughter-in-law? He occasionally looked at family photos on a tablet with his 3-year-old grandson when he had a formal prohibition to show him screens.
Ah, screens! A true scarecrow of parent life, a source of countless (contradictory) studies of researchers and family disagreements … Approaching Christmas holidays, while many parents were preparing to entrust their offspring to their own parents, The anxious instructions have multiplied: no more than twenty minutes a day. No cartoon, the confiscated tablet!
“With my mother, the screens, it is without limit, annoys Anne-Sophie (many interlocutors have requested anonymity), an executive in a large Parisian company. I may repeat to him that I do not Do not want my children to have access to it, nothing helps. I have raised the tone countless times, she does not understand, and said to me: “You were watching TV when you were small, I don’t see The problem. “” This 42-year-old mother is very annoyed when she has to entrust her children aged 5 and 8 to their grandmother for an evening or a weekend. She continues: “When I say:” No screen, huh! “, She understands” no television “, so she authorizes videos on her phone.” It’s not the same thing, “she replies. “Anne-Sophie believes that the screens” diverted her from reading “when she was younger. “I was raised by television, and I played a lot of video games. I had rotten notes in the French bac, she breathes. I don’t want to reproduce this at home.”
For her part, Marianne, 64, retired, “bangs a lot” with her son “opposed to the screens” when she keeps her 4-year-old granddaughter, two days a week. “I read her a lot of stories, she loves it. We have gone all the Disney books. Read and reread ten times. She knows them by heart and she likes it. I decided to show her cartoons because I think it’s a good complement to books. My son shouts me: he thinks she doesn’t need a screen, I think it’s good for her, these are films made for children and I only show him that. “
discuss the limits
In terms of screens, we imagine the “cake” grandparents a little quickly, more permissive, wanting to please children. Flore Guattari, clinical psychologist and member of the association 3-6-9-12, created by Serge Tisseron , receives children or teenagers alone or accompanied by their family, depending on the situations. She nuances: “I also meet very permissive parents who find themselves in front of grandparents who do not understand why children do not come out more for a walk. The two situations exist.”
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