91 - Parenting with Heart: Parenting in the Digital Age
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
2 Helpful resources along the parenting journey:
Link to 8 Feelings for Children Chart
The research in the book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness supports everything that is contained in each and every episode of Living with Heart: From Birth to Death. The authors state, “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period” (page 10). The 85-year longitudinal study, which is ongoing, concluded that, “Relationships are not just essential as stepping-stones to other things, and they are not simply a functional route to health and happiness. They are an end in themselves.” (page 51).
The Good Life, by Robert Waldinger, MD, and Marc Schulz, PhD.
Living with Heart podcast content focus is always about how we are created to find fulfillment through relationships.
We are created as emotional and spiritual creatures, created to do one thing in this life and that is live fully.
We cannot live fully unless we are doing so in relationship with ourselves, others, and God. The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd, PhD.
Digital age
Since the early 21st century our children have been living in a time unlike any other in history. The technological advances, starting with the internet, then the cell phone, and now AI, have presented parents and children with a significant dilemma, one that will require some difficult choices to combat the negative consequences of our extraordinary advancements.
Digital technology has been proven to be addictive; screening distracts people from their emotions and addressing their needs for connecting relationally.
Screening distracts people from their emotions and needs for connecting relationally, and AI puts people at risk of avoiding the brain work of thinking.
We are creating a world in which we are not actually involved, with “sweat, thinking, touching the dirt, needing others with us, etc.”
FOMO and the increase of depression and anxiety is directly related to the digital age.
Potential negative consequences of digital technology
Techne’ is the Greek root for the word technology. It means “technique, referring to the practical knowledge involved in making or doing something.”
Epistome’ is the Greek root for the word epistemology. It means “knowledge and understanding, as in to know or understand something.”
Epistemology allows us to understand why we do things or what we do them for. Technology allows us to implement and realize end results to fulfill “why” we do something.
“Why” we do something needs to take precedence over end results; otherwise, we implement without principles or purpose.
Today’s society is focused on “how to do something” more than “why” or “what for” and “what are the repercussions.”
In today’s digital age, we are at risk of allowing “how something is done” supersede “what we do it for.”
We are at risk of technique taking over for the root of “what we doing something for.”
Just because we are able to do something does not mean that we simply “should.” We need to realize the “what for,” or why we are doing something before the “how to,” or technology is applied to do something.
The price people pay
The brain will “settle” for distraction that allows it to avoid pain. The brain is naturally a pain avoidant instrument.
The heart, however, is a “pain” tolerant instrument that is inherently capable of relationship and love.
If we distract ourselves from the heart and the struggles of love, we lose relational connection along with all the consequences that come with the loss.
Anthem to the Invisible by Chip Dodd
Anthem to the Invisible is a sci-fi, dystopian novel based upon the hypothesis of technology taking over for human struggle, in the name of the greatest good for the greatest number and for the promise of 0% emotional pain. The result is that human beings “forget” how to live in relationship except for those people who reawaken to their own hearts, their own feelings, and their own needs for relational fulfillment.
We must do the hard work of giving up distraction for real life, which leads to living fully, loving deeply, and leading well.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center