How bad a conscience should I really feel?

Choose language in the Google-box below. Some translations may be flawed or inaccurate.

Let me take you back in time. We start just after New Year, the first days of 2020, when I was still a married mother of three and corona was something that only existed in China. In the house with two adults and a normal everyday life, we tried our best to get into routines after Christmas celebrations and many days off outside routines. I had the annual conscience settlement with screen time and the introduction of routines again.

Little did I know that two months later I would be in the midst of the greatest crisis of my life and on the steps of a state of emergency we have not witnessed since the war. As a trained teacher and speaker in Barnevakten, I was regarded as one of the «experts» in this field about screen time limitation. And even though I had the same challenges as any other family, I had a feeling that things were going pretty well.

Then it happens. The breakup that cut my legs off as a human being and a mother. And a month later, we stand with both feet planted in the middle of a lockdown. Then suddenly all the principles and ability to use all the knowledge I had about screen time and control were difficult to pull up to the surface.

New habit – or bad habit?

At the start of the pandemic, we were parents in the same booth. I experienced that many people let up the reins and thought that this was not going to last that long, so we could in good conscience let it go. Most people recognized that the children were allowed to more screen use without being skeptical.

Suddenly, I noticed that this was not so easy to change the habit as society reopened and the children could run more freely outside. Now they had become accustomed to more screen time, I had become accustomed to the breaks, and suddenly this had developed into a habit or maybe a bad habit, that’s what I became unsure about.

My guilty conscience grew as the screen use grew and I began to wonder if I really suited myself as a mother anyway. Then I sit here then, a year and a half after Norway was in lockdown, and still feel the bad conscience. It’s not that my children aren’t social with other children. They are social in their own way. Occasionally, all three kids sit and chat with their own friends and collaborate on the game they’re playing. My daughter makes videos and has her cousin on the most incredible everyday things. And with family and friends in several places in the country, there are quite a few positive aspects to being able to meet online.

But what’s now?

So I guess the question is how bad a conscience I should feel. My daughter has learned how to edit movies and has made new friends online. My six-year-old son gets to talk to his best friend in Oslo and has learned more English than I would expect him to learn in his first three years at school. And my nine-year-old gets his well-needed break from other people.

And that’s not all, mum has become a gamer, now I’m the leader in Muscle Simulator in Roblox.

I think I still need to work to make sure we are more present here and now. At the same time, I know that my children have a different relationship for being social online more than me. While as I have a responsibility to help them to a balanced life, with physical activity, healthy eating, care, and love, I may be able to shrug my shoulders and not think that I am such a terribly bad mother after all.

And so as not to be in danger of getting the medal for the worst mother of all time, my children will have fresh air and movement. They get a lot of love and care too. It’s just that the screen has become a slightly bigger part of our lives than I thought it would.

(The article was previously published in the magazine «Digital Barndom» (Digital Childhood) sent to the members of Barnevakten. The magazine is also for sale in Narvesen.)

(Published on 08 December 2021 and translated by Ratan)