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What is the secret to parenting success? Controlled parenting, also known as authoritative parenting, might just be the answer. In this digital age, using parent apps is an important part of controlled parenting that parents the world over are making use of.

As parents, we play a pivotal role in our children’s growth – getting it right is not always easy. We find ways to cultivate good habits in our children and groom them to become great individuals in society. Parents also affect their children’s behaviour from a very early age.

In this day and age, digital parenting has become more common as more and more children grow up digital. Digital parenting is parenting done via technological means, such as downloading parental control apps or installing monitoring software on computers. This is a necessity given children’ wide usage of the internet and is an essential component of controlled parenting.

Broadly speaking, parenting styles lie on a spectrum, with intrusive and permissive parenting at the extreme ends and controlled or authoritative parenting a blend of the two.

A.A.P (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive) – What type of parent are you?

Research suggests that both authoritarian (firm enforcement, weak encouragement of independence and individuality, and high hostility) and permissive parenting, which is the exact opposite, could cause damage to a child’s growth.

What children need is a blend of intrusive and permissive styles of parenting. An intrusive style of parenting is one with a lot of parental dominance and aggression. On the other hand, permissive style of parenting allows for children to grow up independently.

In comparison, authoritative parenting, defined by firm enforcement, encouraging independence and individuality, and low hostility, has been proven to be beneficial to children.

In authoritative parenting, wielding control is a pivotal part of the parenting process. In this day and age, parental control apps are one way for parents to monitor their child’s daily activities.

The role of parental apps in authoritative parenting

Parental control apps help to curb screen time usage, especially for parents who are unable to monitor their children all the time. Some features of parental apps include device time scheduling, blocking inappropriate content on mobiles, and decreasing screen time usage.

According to a recent study by JAMA Pediatrics, excessive screen time can negatively impact your child’s development including memory, attention span and literary skills. It can lead to poor sleeping patterns and lower outdoor activity, increasing their likelihood of eye health problems such as myopia (shortsightedness).

Plano, a parental control app that cares for your child’s eyes

Technology has pervaded our children’s’ lives, promoting a trend of sitting in front of screens in order to be entertained. The recent emergence and proliferation of virtual reality has also been proven to cause eye strain. Moreover, as more and more children around the world are spending less time outdoors and more time glued to their devices, the incidence of myopia has spiked tremendously. Surveys state that myopia affects one in four 7 year olds, one-third of 9 year olds and half of 12 year olds. This trend is showing no signs of abating as it quietly sweeps other parts of the world.

This is exactly why we developed plano, a parent app that empowers you to protect your child’s eyes by monitoring their face-to-screen distance, postures, providing them with eye break reminders, and providing parents with detailed device use and myopia reports. We have also developed the first ever smart eye-check booking platform for children to go for timely and comprehensive eye checks! *applicable to users in Singapore only

As parents, it is our responsibility to adopt an effective parenting style suited to our child’s growth. In this digital age, let’s make full use of the benefits technology offers us – in the form of parent apps!