If you are someone who has always loved the freedom of “no strings attached”, the idea of marrying and having kids could be quite underwhelming. The idea of having a family always used to bug me, until I finally found the love of my life. It's when I categorically made up my mind about what I wanted from our marriage. I wanted kids, I was clear about that, but I wasn’t certain how I would be taking care of them.
The Outgrow of Parenting Fears and My Redemption
A year after my marriage, I got pregnant with a baby boy. The hormonal changes were intense during the pregnancy, and again, I started overthinking about how I would be raising him.
When I was in the 24th month of my pregnancy, I started staying emotionally distressed about how I would be dealing with my toddler's late night tantrum and smelly diapers (honestly, I don't feel the same now), or his aggression when he'll grow into a preteen. I was worried that he would do the same or something even more peculiar than what I used to do and that too without giving anyone even a single clue.
But to ease off my emotional distress, I started visiting a parenting counselor in Ohio Vanessa Thames, a renowned child specialist and a psychologist, who was known for her custom parenting techniques. It’s her who taught me about the powerful tool of operant conditioning.
Through years, I continued using operant conditioning to teach my child the right kind of behavior. Vanessa told me about the different disciplining techniques that parents could use including positive and negative reinforcement to strengthen or weaken a behavior. According to B.F Skinner, the man who came up with the theory of positive and negative reinforcement believed that there are three different responses/operant that lead can affect the behavior: Positive, negative reinforcements and punishment.
All Parents Use Operant Conditioning to Influence Their Kids’ Behavior
As parents, we all have used operant conditioning to chastise our kids, but quite unknowingly. For instance, when a child gets a bad report from school, their digital devices are taken, until they show a change in their behavior. This is an example of negative reinforcement. They know if they would continue showing up a bad behavior at school, they won’t be getting their cell phone back. So this way, their bad behavior is weakened with negative reinforcement.
And for the times when we want to encourage a certain behavior in our kids, we positively reinforce it by rewarding them so their chances of staying consistent with their good behavior improve. if you toilet-trained your child by promising them a candy every time you are positively reinforcing their behavior, then you have been using positive reinforcement.
Negative Reinforcement Vs. Punishment
Spanking your child for their bad behavior is punishment while taking away a privilege for them is negative reinforcement. According to experts, punishment further induces negative behavior so it shouldn't be used at any cost.
Digital Challenges Come at The Forefront When Your Child Grows into A Teen
But when kids hit their preteen years, a lot changes, including their interests. Usually, they are inclined towards activities that are risky, adrenaline-packed, exciting or intriguing. Kids sneak out at night, binge watch Netflix, Snapchat while driving (with the speed filter), and if they don't get the chances to sneak out, they spend their night video calling or chatting with friends or who knows, even anonymous people that they met online.
Positive Reinforcement? Nah! Your Kids Don’t Give a Dime About It
Many parents won't agree that positive reinforcement doesn’t work for their preteens. It might be true for them, but not for me or the majority of people aren't around me who also believe that preteens' behavioral issues can only be mediated using negative reinforcement. Let me explain to you why is it so.
Think of all the possible instances where your kids’ behavior concerns you. For instance, if your child has a habit of sneaking out at night when you are asleep, there is no incentive that you can give them to encourage staying at home (no positive reinforcement available). But if you'll reinforce their behavior by grounding them (taking away their privilege to go out), they would fear sneaking out. Similarly, if your kids have any of the aforementioned perverse online habits like Snapchatting or binge watching Netflix, you can discourage their such behavior by taking away their phones and other digital devices. But there is nothing you can offer that may encourage them to use their cell phones less often.
Coping The Biggest Digital Parenting Challenge with an iPhone Spyware Without Jailbreaking
According to a poll by SheByShe, guarding against technological influences, dealing with bedtime hassles and allowing children to be independent in the today’s dangerous world are the only three of the many other parenting challenges that parents are facing these days.
When it comes to my preteen, my biggest challenge was to limit his exposure to the online world. My husband was kind enough to get him a cell phone but I never advocated his decision to do so. And just within a short span of time, he got obsessed with his iPhone. He would spend hours in front of his phone streaming videos, Facebooking or just making the perfect Snapchat.
It was quite convenient for me to simply take away something from him when he was younger, but this doesn’t work on him as a preteen as he gets offended very soon. So even I tried to take away his iPhone, I was always met with extreme dissonance and retaliation.
Eventually, I resorted to the internet to seek help. When I looked around for a solution, I came across this iPhone spyware without jailbreaking from Xnspy; an app that can be installed on kids' iPhones, iPads, and iPods to discourage cell phone abuse. The app automatically informs me if my son sneaks out at night or if he is using his iPhone at 2 AM in the morning. It even lets me restrict or block his access to certain apps or features (negative reinforcement) on his phone.
Xnspy gives me access to my son’s entire cell phone. I can remotely read all of his text messages, emails, internet browsing history, contacts, IMs and even photos and videos. If I have to check the current location of my child, I can even do that using Xnspy.
How to Use Xnspy?
Largely every monitoring/spy app for iPhone requires jailbreaking, while a manual installation is also required. This isn’t only strenuous but risky too (voids iPhone’s warranty). But for Xnspy, I only need the iCloud credential of my son to use this iPhone spyware without jailbreaking. With Xnspy, I can watch over both his digital and real world. If it’s something that relates to his obsessive cell phone use, I simply lock his cell phone or just certain apps that are the source of the problem.
Make The Most Out of Technology
If your kids’ use of technology is challenging your parenting, you can use the same technology to counter their risky or negative behavior.
If you have a preteen or teen, you may well understand why negative reinforcement always works better than positive reinforcement. Our teens’ digital world is the biggest threat to their peace, tranquility, and future. So get an iPhone spyware without jailbreaking for all such digital challenges that you are inevitably going to face as the parent of a teen.