In the day to day of work and school and lunches and paying bills and solving problems and footy training and dinners and dancing and music lessons and all the driving to all those activities, when do we have time to think about what matters for us and our family?
Dolly’s Dream Family Technology Plan is designed to help that be part of our conversation. Rather than a plan that focus’ on screentime and the challenges and arguments around it, this plan makes us focus on the positives – what are our family priorities, what do we enjoying doing together away from technology and how can we do those things more? Families are all different and some might value their football team or getting our to do sport together, while for others it might be creating some time to just go for a walk or check on the animals together or a night time book that mum or dad read to the kids before bed. It doesn’t matter what it is – what matters is that we recognise it.
In recognising what we value in this way, and creating space to talk about it and put it in a plan the Dolly’s Dream Family Tech Plan is different – and more successful. In our trial, families recognised and point out that the approach of thinking about what we like to do and should do together, as opposed to focussing on the negative of what we don’t want people to do really helped to shift their perspectives. They saw technology as another tool that could provide some fun and family enjoyment – watching a favourite TV show, or sharing YouTube clips or apps that people like, connecting with extended family on social media. And, the amount of time children spent playing on computer was less important because they were doing other things that they and the family valued and saw as important.
So much of what we think about technology just requires us to reframe our perspective and look at things a little differently. Parents all carry a lot of guilt and high expectations on themselves to “do the right thing” when actually, being “good enough” is more than adequate. And, that is what this Family Tech Plan asks family to be and to do – enough.
Start you family conversations using the Family Technology Plan today.
“It is not about the device…let us remember our life is full of a lot of other rich things”
“The Family Technology Plan took us back to values. What do you value and prioritise as a family.”
“We are going to make sure we connect and do others things together as well as the technology in our livers”
“You don’t have to do it all at once. You can have a bunch of short conversations."
