Our collective obsession can both hurt and help!
I reached the breaking point,
as many parents do, about two and a half months in. My newborn son,
Oliver, was hitting a phase where his five senses were really coming
online. The mere act of being awake was often overstimulating; sometimes
he would start to cry when we turned on a bright light or closed a door
too loudly.
It was late afternoon
and he was sitting in my lap wailing. I rocked him, fed him, and changed
his diaper, but nothing helped. In desperation I did something that
until that point I had resisted: I grabbed my iPhone and opened up the
Comics app. As soon as I started flipping through panels of the Wolverine
saga, the crying stopped. His little mouth gaped open in wonder. I took
his hand and swiped it across the screen. A new image appeared. He
smiled in delight.
My mother came in from
the kitchen. "What are you showing him?" she asked with horror. "Don't
you know how bad that is for his brain?"
"It's not that serious, Mom," I countered, waving her off. "A little bit of time playing with my phone isn't hurting him."
My wife, overhearing
us, joined in the conversation from the next room. "You're going to turn
him into a vegetable," she shouted.
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