Growing Up Social {Book Review + Giveaway}

Many thanks to Propeller Consulting, LLC for providing this prize for the giveaway. Choice of winners and opinions are 100% my own and NOT influenced by monetary compensation. I did receive a sample of the product in exchange for this review and post.

I usually do not have a lot of time for reading because my life is consumed with so many other things, like planning meals, cleaning the house, taking care of my girls, going on outings, posting on my website, reading emails, working from home, and more! Yes, I may have made you tired by just listing all my daily duties, but lately I have been trying to figure out what I could do without.

One of the things I asked myself was how much time was consumed being social on online. Keeping it up for the sake of my website is one thing but another is constantly checking for emails, checking my Facebook or Instagram, or just browsing the internet. My screen time is definitely very heightened and it gets tiring at times. I always wonder how all that distraction on the computer or smartphone might be affecting my daughters’ perspective of their mother and father.

When I read Growing Up Social, it gave me a different perspective about the society we live in now and its effects on our young generation. Gary Chapman and Arelene Pellicane team up to write a book that empowers parents to make positive changes within their own homes in order to bring back the close knit family. The true question at hand, that these authors challenged me with:

Is technology bringing your family together or driving you farther apart?

I know a lot of our moms constantly talk about how much is too much when letting kids watch T.V. and while many do not even turn it on, or even admit at the amount of time their kids are watching, it is obvious that it is a great help in many homes. When I started reading this book I was nervous that I had already scarred my children by the amount of screen time they have had, but the authors stated that a max of 2 hours of screen time is usually the healthy limit for children without causing any issues.

In our home, we made rules early on about watching movies or even touching mommy and daddy’s phones. Our kids do not play on our smart phones or touch any computers in the house. One of the things that we were told early on was the reality of letting little children play with really expensive equipment. Why risk it? It was primarily for that fact only until I really started reading this book.

How do smart phones, computers, television all affect how our children relate to one another? Are they our babysitters and crutches for those busy times in our day? The real question is how is it going to affect our children socially. While technology has its potential to add value to families, it can slowly bring family apart and even hinder a child’s emotional and social development. How scary!

In the book, the authors use their own personal stories in addition examples to weave in the realities of technology in every day life. It was very easy to read every chapter and in no way had a judgmental tone. The tone was informative and loving, with desire to capture the attention of ALL parents even myself about raising our kids in a screen-driven world.

I like the books format because it works on different issues for each family at where they are in their lives. I also learned, through specific chapters, the five A+ skills that every healthy child needs to master: affection, appreciation, anger management, apology, and attention.

Equip your child to be relationally rich in a digital world
Replace mindless screen time with meaningful family time
Establish simple boundaries that make a huge difference
Discover what’s working for families that have become screen savvy
Learn healthy ways to occupy your child while you get things done

You might be a parent that might be thinking that there is no way out not that a child is hooked or consumed on their video games, computer or phone, but there is hope according to the authors. They share the healthy way to recognize our faults as parents for not taking control. They share the obvious difficulty of reclaiming your child’s attention by taking away screen time, but it is encouraging to know that in any stage in life, it is possible to work and bring back the art of togetherness.

Please take time to read this book. It was very eye-opening for me as a parent and even more, it encouraged me how to teach my children from a different perspective that focuses on love. Screen time does not have to be eradicated, it just needs to be limited. We all just need to learn how to live with screen time and not to live for screen time.