Signing books outside Dymocks, Albury. With thanks to David Lewis of Dymocks, who kindly offered the book-signing, And to all of those people who visited me there.

Jj is for Jottings 14. Royal Children’s Hospital Survey.

I heard a report on the ABC news on December 2nd, and grabbed a pen and paper as it was introduced. Consequently I have only the bare bones of the report, but roughly – there was a survey of 2000 families undertaken by RCH, asking what parents’ greatest concerns were about their children’s health. The number one greatest concern was ….childhood obesity? No. Drug abuse? No. Bullying? No. It was (drumroll, because this is what I am always banging on about) the time children spend on screens. A couple of concerned mothers were interviewed, and they presented as intelligent and caring. They both said that screen time was on the increase, and that their children became grumpy and tuned-out when they had been playing games on screens. Their children, shown in the report, were younger than school age. One mother reported, rather apologetically I thought, that they let their children play computer games on a Sunday morning so they could have a sleep-in. What do they think we did when our children were young? Either got up to supervise the children or trained the children to play quietly in their rooms.
I have to say that the part that had me bamboozled was the fact that screen time was their biggest concern, and yet, at those young ages, parents have complete control over their children’s exposure to screens, so why on earth don’t they exercise it? It’s very different when children are much older and using computers to do their homework.