Dysfunctional Families

At a recent gathering, one mother was commenting, “we are a dysfunctional family. At lunch today, at the restaurant, my husband was using his i-mode, I was using my blackberry to access my office emails, and my son was playing his handheld games. We are together and yet not-together.”

If it sounds familiar, you are not alone. Do you talk about it, and just accept it as it is? We often raise concerns that we do not have enough time for our family. When the family is together, we just have to actively plan to make it quality family time.

What has this got to do with eyecare management?

In the course of our business, we came to recognize that the difficulty most parents faced was with excessive use of computer games and handheld games. Although they know it is not entirely a healthy activity, most have resigned to it. This activity spoil our eyesight and affects negatively a child’s development and their families life as well.

Although there are tools to control a child’s computer usage such as Computer Time introduced by Energie EyeCare, what is important are the parents’ mindset. Its individual families’ priority and parents usually set the example. Sometimes, we are aware that it is undesirable, but we lack the patience, or worse, the confidence to disallow it so as not to be seen as Uncool.

Are there differences in computer gaming children, and non-computer gaming children? We will try to share that in our next blog.