Before my daughter was born, my wife and I already knew we would want to wait as long as possible before introducing her to any sort of smart device. The addictive nature and negative effects of smartphones were apparent enough in my own life, and I kept hearing and seeing examples of younger and younger kids getting smartphones and tablets - the so-called “iPad kids.” No way was this a good thing for a developing mind.
My wife and I weren’t sure how we would approach managing and introducing this technology to our daughter, but we knew we had at least a couple of years before she understood what a phone or tablet even was, and a few more years before she’d be asking for one. We knew that “screen time” was the main concern with babies, so it would be easy enough to avoid showing her our phone or the TV screen. Problem solved, right?
Wellllll… after a couple of weeks of being a new dad, I started to get this icky feeling whenever I used my phone in front of my daughter. I wasn’t showing her the screen, but as she took in the world for the first time, was she noticing that almost every adult had this box in their hand that they stared at? (The average adult checks their phone over 100 times per day.) She was learning through observation, and I was modeling the exact opposite behavior of what I wanted her to learn from. She obviously didn’t know what my phone was, but as her dad, it was my job to introduce her to all new things - toys, food, plants, books, etc., and it felt like my phone had indirectly made it onto that list.
So my smartphone management journey started a little sooner than I initially expected. My wife and I decided to set a rule: no letting our daughter see us on our phones at all (or at least minimize it as much as possible) We aren’t heavy phone users to begin with, so we were never scrolling or watching movies in front of her, but even checking our phones, sending texts, or looking something up was now off-limits - and it felt good. It felt like we were doing the right thing for her.
Unfortunately, to follow this rule, I found myself turning my back on my daughter whenever I needed to use my phone. I had work emails to respond to, or my wife would text me from the store, or I needed to look up a recipe. There are a million legitimate reasons to use your phone, and it was tough to manage all of that while sticking to our no-phones-in-front-of-our-daughter rule.
This is where the Bubbie Book idea came from. How could I still have access to my phone (when I needed it) and model something that would benefit my daughter? What if, instead of a phone, my daughter saw me reading a fun children’s book? This could disguise my phone use and increase her interest in books. Nothing pulls in a baby’s interest like something their parents are interacting with. And just like that, the idea for the Bubbie Book was born.
I created my first Bubbie Book using a children’s board book, some magnets from Amazon, and a steel plate from the hardware store. It was rudimentary and clunky, but it did the trick. I could access my phone guilt-free, and it felt like I was modeling something positive.
I’ll be the first to admit that the Bubbie Book is not a perfect solution to this complex problem. It will only work for so long, it’s not super convenient (which I actually think is a good thing), and eventually you’ll have to come up with another solution once it’s no longer effective. Furthermore, does using your phone in front of your baby even matter? Does modeling reading children’s books make your infant more interested in them? I truly don’t know. I could make some assumptions based on the available literature and my experience, but for parents who are concerned about smartphones, I think the logic is there.
Look around at the world today - everyone is staring down at their phones, and that’s the world your baby is seeing. A Bubbie Book helps change that reality and keeps their world smartphone-free for just a little longer.
Jake