- “Parents who are confounded by the digital age, parents who are worried about its effect on their children, parents who recognize that resisting it is of no avail---which is most parents---will find this book enormously helpful."
-- Bernice Weissbourd,
Family Focus, Founder and President Emeritus 
Dr. S Appearances
Veteran Chicago-area child-psychiatrist and Northwestern University faculty member Dr. Eitan Schwarz is launching his national campaign to assist parents manage their kids’ media lives in comprehensive, positive and healthy ways. He is beginning with appearances in suburban Chicago libraries. His scheduled appearances are online at https://mydigitalfamily.org
Dr. Schwarz will discuss his book, “Kids, Parents & Technology: A Guide for Young Families.” Known to his patients as Dr. S, the Skokie physician offers fresh child- and family-oriented thinking.
Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, a Harvard Medical School lecturer praises the book: “Finally someone- Dr. Schwarz – has given parents an easy-to read, but very helpful guide to managing the electronic world that surrounds children and us. Read it!”
“I want to reset parental attitudes and empower parents with the tools to make their digital families successful digital families” remarks Dr. Schwarz, a doctor with both a mission and the solution to managing digital media families.
“After a decade of feeling overwhelmed about digital media consumption by kids, it’s for parents to take charge of media consumption as they do other home appliances. Setting limits have proved to be insufficient solutions. Parents need to rethink the use of digital media for their digital families. That’s why I wrote this book.”
What a great article! Making good decisions about media consumption is an ongoing parenting and personal challenge for moms. Working moms, with limited time and random cell phone and other tech intrusions into their family time, often have special challenges. My work and research has shown me that this is an important family issue that parents are often torn about. Many come up with good compromises, but stay feeling uncertain and have guilt feelings. Except for limit setting, there just is not enough good guidance (except for scare advice) out there, even after over a decade of media dominance in our homes. So I decided to write “Kids, Families & Technology: A Guide for Young Families” as family- and child- centered book based on my many years of practice and research as a child psychiatrist about making media a positive part of parenting and family life (see www.mydigitalfamily.org.) I believe that media is here to stay, and with guided use can become a positive and helpful parts of family life that improve relationships.
Re “Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality” (Digital Domain, July 11),
which described how studies showed a decline in academic performance after students in low-income households received a computer in the home:
Without active parental planning and supervision, children consume junk media as they do junk food. Left to themselves, children properly regard almost everything as toys and do not consider long-term benefits or hazards.
Parents should regard digital media as a way to enhance children’s development and family life. Learning is essentially a developmental social that needs the nurturing involvement of adults.
EITAN D. SCHWARZ, M.D.
Skokie,Ill., July 11
The writer is a child psychiatrist.
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A nagging sense of guilt and inadequacy haunts many moms distracted by today’s technology, just as their kids are also becoming less connected to families, as studies show. Good parenting today requires careful planning – like meal preparation – setting access limits of electronic-free times and places, and extensive meaningful positive planned interactions with media together.