A new study shows that the use of digital devices to soothe your baby or child may lead to more problems with emotional reactivity down the road.
“Even slightly increasing a child’s emotional reactivity, that just means it’s more likely when one of those daily frustrations comes up, you’re more likely to get a bigger reaction,” said lead study author Dr. Jenny Radesky, a developmental behavioral pediatrician.
Drawing conclusions from a sample size of 422 parents, the researchers investigated caregiver responses to assess how likely they were to utilize devices for distraction and how dysregulated their 3- to 5-year-old child’s behavior was over a six-month period.
According to the study published on Monday in the JAMA Pediatrics, frequently using digital devices to distract from unpleasant and disruptive behavior like tantrums was associated with more emotional dysregulation in kids.
“When you see your 3- to 5-year-old having a tough emotional moment, meaning they are screaming and crying about something, they’re getting frustrated, they might be hitting or kicking or lying on the floor. … If your go-to strategy is to distract them or get them to be quiet by using media, then this study suggests that is not helping them in the long term,” said Radesky, associate professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School.
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Experts say using the media as a way of distracting a child robs it of the ability to respond to difficult emotions.
“I’m just going to show big emotions so we can stop what we’re doing, and I can escape this demand,” she said.
Instead of distraction, Radesky recommends taking tantrums and emotional dysregulation as opportunities to teach children how to identify and respond to emotions in helpful ways.
“There is no substitute for adult interaction, modeling and teaching,” Dr. Joyce Harrison, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore said.
Radesky further recommended using color zones to talk about emotions, especially when dealing with kids in pre-school.
Calm and content can be green; worried or agitated can be yellow; and upset or angry can be red, using graphics or images of faces to help kids match what they’re feeling with what color zone they are in.
It can be helpful for caregivers to help kids name their emotions and offer solutions when they are responding inappropriately to those feelings.