Kia ora friends,
I’ll try to be efficient, today. Body and brain and eyes could use a break from sitting and screens. Biggie, yesterday, getting stuck in to the report I shared last time … the Systematic Analysis about the impacts of our screen-dependent lives on the rapidly developing brains of the babies who depend on us and our attention to teach them about the world and how to regulate themselves in it. Ay yi yi.
It’s so grim. Anyway. Trying to work with a colleague up north to get a summary ready for sharing (call it a briefing, if you like!). How to take a report so massive (in depth, breadth, complexity and importance!) and make it fit some guidelines that force you down to something like 800 words. I sorta physically hurt from the exercise.
In part because I was in public place and I have grown so used to working at home. It is a good feeling though, an old feeling … one of sitting and wrestling with ideas. I used to do it in the previous public library, 30 years ago. That’s the one that fell down during all our quakes. I remember the previous iteration, too. Over by where the police station used to be. Anyway. I was going to be efficient.
So, here is the report in question (and just ONE of the alarming things … THIS STUDY, 63,000 participants. Screen time at age one and chronic constipation at age three … is there ANYTHING devices can’t ruin? Even the joy of a holy evacuation?) There are repeated calls for the need for education for parents, which we have been saying for years, already.
This is a paper released SINCE that report. Still going. Still faces. Still a massive problem.
Bit embarrassing how late I am to the party, but holy ravioli KA RAWE! Tupuna parenting is such a wonderful kaupapa and I would dearly love to learn more, as you and the sunshine itself are my witnesses.
I have been revisiting the excellent awareness alerts that GAINING produced (and I helped in some small, weenie ways!) This project reminds me how much work is hidden within those alerts, and about how out of practice I am for big days of sitting! Usually I work a while, go and garden and think for a bit, work a while, go and put dinner into a slow cooker and make a cup of tea, work for a while more, then begin domestic shift in earnest. Fingers crossed a walk or some time on a yoga mat somewhere in there.
I’ve been coveting this book, and won’t you please enjoy this beautiful piece of writing about fatherhood by a Dad in Italy (thanks for the share, Greg!).
Ending with something lovely. I think there is a poignant statement to be made here, is it the whakataukī about walking backwards? Hang on, let me find that.
Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua: ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past’
This whakataukī or ‘proverb’ speaks to Māori perspectives of time, where the past, the present and the future are viewed as intertwined, and life as a continuous cosmic process.
Rameka, L. (2017). Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua: ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past’. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(4), 387–398. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949116677923
