Bad Habits Caused by Mummy : (

Not too long ago, I had to put Jiale through cold turkey as I wanted to break his TV addiction. The poor boy suffered, for something which was my fault. I should not have started letting him watch TV at all in the first place. I am very happy we are over that now. Sorry, Baobei!

But, lousy mummy here started him on another bad habit. I let him play with my iPhone when he woke up in the morning, as I did not want to wake up as early as him and I did not want him to wake Didi with his whining &/or crying (cos I gotta get up once Didi is up). And slowly but surely, he became used to playing with the iPhone in the mornings and would demand for it once he woke up. (Jiale is the early riser in the family.. he seldom sleeps past 7am. Imagine our suffering.)

It was not long before I realised it was a problem. It was bad for his eyesight, and he even started demanding for more new apps. It also meant that he could have spent that 30 minutes or one hour doing free play (trains etc) instead of staring at the iPhone. But I was still too lazy to do anything about it : (

But five days ago, I finally made up my mind. Cannot let it go on anymore. Even if I had to wake up at 6am+ everyday, so be it.

The next morning, I told Jiale, no iPhone. As expected, he started whining and crying loudly. I kept talking to him and sayang-ing him and trying to distract him. Surprisingly, his tantrum did not last very long. He then wanted me to walk out to the living room with him so that he could play with his trains. I managed to delay a bit by telling him what time I would get up (about 10 minutes later), and he was agreeable.

Same thing happened the next two mornings. By the 4th morning, he came to me and told me, 'no iPhone'. YIPPEE!! I still had to entertain him lah, but at least there were no more demands and complaints! I was very happy that he remembered 'no iPhone' without me having to remind him : )

I am going to continue this cold turkey until he doesn't mention iPhone at all, just like he hardly ever asks for TV nowadays (maybe once in 3 weeks max, and he wanders off to play after watching for about 10 minutes). Now that we are over the early morning hurdle, it's going to be quite easy cos I rarely let him play with my iPhone at other times.

I really regret taking the 'easy' route out and making him suffer. I hope hope hope I never make the same mistake again! Truly, there is always a solution, just that it might require more effort from the parents.