What If We Had The Same Rules for Parenting As We Do For Driving?

Here, in the state of California, it is illegal to text and drive. Regardless of the law, however, it is becoming common knowledge that it’s not smart to drive while on your phone.

Texting takes up an unbelievable amount of attention. Texting while driving reduces your brain’s activity by 37% on average. This is why it’s illegal. Texting and driving causes you to become unaware of your surroundings, thus making you clueless to what’s coming. You could get into an accident and yet have no idea what caused it.

What if we weren’t allowed to text and parent either?

Many people work within the law by pulling over to shoot a text or answer the phone. What if we did the same when we were with our family? What if we excused ourselves and “pulled over” when we needed to use our phone to communicate with someone else?

My theory is we would pay more attention to our children and notice a lot more. We would likely be shocked less by accidents because we could see what’s coming. Many accidents we would be able to steer away from entirely.

By being more present, we become less accident prone.

I would love to hear your theories about what would happen if we used the same rules about texting with our children as we do on the road. I actually did this—for 30 days, in fact. If you’d like to hear more about it, I documented the experience in the Disconnected Dad podcast, available now for download on iTunes.