Do you feel ‘phone shamed’?

Mum bore - 12 Jun 17

Phones….. we have entered the age where we simply CANNOT live without them. There is nothing a phone can’t do.

You can Grocery Shop, book a holiday, order a Pizza, find out the name of that song that’s been bugging you for the last 20 minutes, diagnose yourself with a number of rare and tropical diseases, get directions to the nearest soft play hell zone, phone a friend, send a message in endless different ways, watch a film, take a photo, shoot a video, and of course, access the wonderful black hole that is social media!   *sound of a trumpet*

Phones can give us SO much, and yet, their use is starting to be ‘frowned upon’.

We are judged for taking our eyes off the ‘real’ world. Even more so if you are a parent.

Being a parent means you are not allowed to look at your phone, in the presence of your children, EVER!

This comes under the lovely umbrella called ‘bad parenting’. It is the epitome of ignorance.

If I get my phone out in the presence of my children I know people are looking at me, shaking their judgemental heads and thinking ‘look at that, such a shame, another mum ignoring her children because she is more interested in her phone’ tut tut.

How dare I take my eyes of my children and miss one second of their magical lives. Shame on me!! I shouldn’t have had children if I was just going to ignore them all day playing candy crush and looking at facebook should I? She will regret that when they are older?? She will wish she spent more time looking at them, and less time on her phone! etc etc.

Really??

Since when did glancing (ok staring) at your phone in the presence of your kids become the equivalent to feeding them crack cocaine for breakfast??

Chill out people. Trust me when I say my kids get plenty of my attention. When it comes to narcissism children have it in truck loads, giving them my undivided attention every second of every day is probably going to do them more harm than good.

They don’t look at me and think ‘Mum’s on the phone again!’ they look at me and think ‘Oh…There’s mum’ and then demand whatever it is they want, without a second thought about what I may or may not be doing.

Just now, I was on the toilet, in the bathroom, alone. Eva barges in and sees me sat on the toilet, and says ‘Mummy can you take my plaster off?’

I was literally mid wipe and there she was, in my face, demanding something. She could not give a monkey’s about what I was doing, that is of no relevance to her whatsoever. Her thought process is this;

-I want my plaster off

-Mum can do it

-Find Mum

-Ask her to take my plaster off.

Done.

She could have walked in on me standing on my head eating a banana with my feet and she still would have asked for me to take her plaster off. She is not interested in what I am doing AT ALL.

So….If anything its my kids who are guilty of not paying ME enough attention!!!

Look, don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for staring at your phone, and when my husband pulls his out at the dinner table when he has spent all day at work, a part of me wants to rip it out of his hands and smash him over the head with it, but lets not be too quick to judge.

Is having 5 mins out from your children to scroll through instagram, facebook, twitter, watch random crap on you tube or read the latest drivel from the Daily Mail really that bad??

If it helps, lets apply another context to the following situations.

Here I am sat on the sofa, ignoring my child, ogling my phone (tut tut, such a shame blah blah).

Now imagine I have replaced the phone with a magazine? Or a book? Or some knitting??

Interesting.

Suddenly I become a Mum taking advantage of the peace and quiet and having a bit of ‘me time’ (don’t blame her, look at the boy playing nicely, how lovely blah blah) I’m still ignoring my child, but because I am reading a magazine or whatever it becomes suddenly acceptable. Why is that??

Look at this one. The husband in the background, on his phone. (Yes this is my husband with long hair and a baseball cap on backwards, not a random teenager)

If this was a celeb it would be in the Daily Mail with a headline like ‘Justin Bieber finds phone more interesting than his own child’ or something equally as ridiculous.

Now once again, lets replace the phone with a person. Suddenly the caption becomes ‘Bieber enjoys family day out with friends’.

Once again his gaze is still diverted away from the child, but this is not seen as ignorance. Again, very interesting.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t step away from our phones every now and then, and try and take in our surroundings. To be honest I spend a lot less time on mine when I am busy and more when I’m not. That’s just the way it is, I can take it or leave it.

But, next time you are judging someone else, or being judged, just put it into perspective. If it were a book/magazine/person would the opinion be the same?

Something to think about maybe.

Thanks for reading this, now get off your phones and pay attention to those kids you ignorant lot!!

Mum Bore x

Mum bore

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