Okay, that’s it! The Weston Owl waves the white flag (white-tailed mouse?) about keeping up with the events of the next few days. It is impossible!! Did everyone just forget to check everyone else’s calendar? Did everyone just say, “hey, it’s the last Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday before the holiday week so let’s ALL do something? It’s not possible to get to it all or even post it all. The Owl’s New Year’s Resolution is to figure out a calendar add-on so you can all put in your own events and they are auto-posted. Okay, never mind, who cares?

Here’s a cool event tonight if you’re not attending the admissions event or the Planning Board or the futsal of an Owlet. Yes, this is going to be verbatim from the PTO’s Westword as I simply.cannot.edit.anything.else.

The Weston PTO Presents Dr. Jill Walsh

TWEENS, TEENS, & SCREENS: Helping Children and Teens Move Away from Tech Overload and Towards Healthy Tech Boundaries

Although there has always been debate about the opportunities and challenges with screen time, there was at least a list of best practices that we as parents could seek out as guidelines. Then the pandemic made technology critical for both our children’s academic and social experiences. What do best practices look like now?

Dr. Walsh will go through practical and valuable parameters that we can establish to help set our children up for success navigating their technology. Particular focus will be on thinking about quantity vs. quality of tech use and addressing challenges like multitasking, tech as a mood management tool, and digital socializing. She will also address the recent data suggesting a link between Instagram use and mental illness in teens. While Dr. Walsh will provide a research-based approach, she is also a working mother of two technology-obsessed kids so she will also offer insights into which rules to follow closely and which to worry less about as we navigate this new period of digital engagement. 

Virtual presentation will be held today, Wednesday, November 17 at 7pm for one hour followed by a Q&A. Please register here.