The New Parenting Challenge: When children need boundaries and parents need skills

–By Anupama Mohla

The dinner table was once a place where families could count on being together and having meaningful conversations. Today, in many homes, the dinner table has become less about conversation and more about negotiating screen time.

Despite constant reminders, five minutes becomes twenty. Dinner gets cold. The child becomes defensive and frustrated. The parent becomes angry and overwhelmed. What began as a simple request ends in an argument.

In my work, I repeatedly encounter a variation of this conversation: “I have told my child so many times to put the phone away. Nothing works.”

Parents need to ask a different question: Are they equipped as adults to handle children’s excessive screen time, anxiety and growing dependence on phones?

A child who spends the evening on a phone, eats dinner late and becomes argumentative when asked to put it away can become a source of anxiety for the entire family. The child feels controlled. Before long, everyone is angry and dysregulated.

A parent may not know how to set a boundary without creating a power struggle, communicate without constant lecturing, use consequences rather than threats, reinforce desirable behaviour, or decide when to step in and when to step back.

These are practical parenting skills—and they can be learned.

With an older child, for instance, parents can involve them in decision-making. Involving the child in deciding how a boundary will work can create greater ownership and accountability. The consequence becomes part of an agreed plan.

Positive behaviour deserves the same attention. If a child voluntarily puts the phone away and joins the family for dinner, that cooperation should be appreciated. Appreciation helps children to repeat the behaviour.

There is another question parents should ask about screen use: What is the screen replacing? Is it sleep, physical activity, family conversation, homework?

The answer matters. Children also need to be educated about the threats of the digital world, not merely restricted from it. Depending on what they consume, they may encounter social comparison, body shaming, cyberbullying, online validation and pressure to present a perfect life. The goal should be to raise children who can use technology without being controlled by it.

That requires parents to look at their own behaviour too. A family rule such as “No phones at the dining table” cannot reasonably apply only to the child. If the mother is checking messages and the father is answering work calls during dinner, the child is observing a behaviour that does not align with what is being preached.

Parenting stress has been associated with children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties. Children’s behaviour can also lead to emotional dysregulation.

Emotional regulation means being able to recognise the emotion, pause before responding, and recover after a difficult situation. For years, much of the burden of parenting has fallen on women to manage the child’s behaviour and routines—and somehow remain calm while doing it all. That is unrealistic. Fathers need to participate along with the children. Family rules need to be shared.

The parents should know how to handle disagreements, maintain boundaries, repair relationships and learn from what went wrong. Children learn behaviours by observing them and seeing them modelled around them. Give them something great to model as a parent.