Parent Dialogues

This is a series of 5 remote meetings for parents of children aged 9-14 moderated by a child and adolescent psychologist. During the meetings, parents and experts from different media fields exchanged their experiences, discussed innovations, reflected on how the latter affect us and our relationship with our children, and how the concept of parenting is changing in the modern media environment.

Is your child constantly glued to the phone? Who are their friends and heroes? What virtual reality are they living in? What games do they play and what TV series do they watch? What are their values and who do they identify with? With the global quarantine having shackled public life, today we spend more time in the virtual world than ever before; all of us together, but at the same time each one separately, with our own personal screens; in a new and unfamiliar space where many of us feel uncomfortable. Us, we have appeared here as mature human beings, whereas for our children, this has been their natural environment from their very birth. How do immigrants of the digital world communicate with its natives? During the online meetings, media experts were helping us to understand what is happening to us and our children in an ever-changing media environment.

The series of 5 remote conversations was moderated by PhD in Social Sciences, lecturer at Vilnius University and psychologist at the Consultation and Training Centre Marija Giedraitytė-Guzikauskienė. Personal experiences were shared with parents by film and culture historian and media researcher Lina Kaminskaitė, digital communication strategist and consultant Tomas Nemūra, computer games developer and programmer Dmitrijus Babičius, and literary scholar and expert on reading culture Eglė Baliutavičiūtė.

Conversation topics:

  • Media in childhood and adolescence: data from psychological research, (un)answered questions and life lessons with Marija Giedraitytė-Guzikauskienė
  • What can we learn from TV series? with Lina Kaminskaitė
  • Computer games: history, pros and cons, tips for parents with Dmitrijus Babičius
  • Security and social media with Tomas Nemūra
  • Teenagers and reading: can we encourage to read more? with Eglė Baliutavičiūtė

The Parent Dialogues took place from 21 April to 19 May 2020, on Tuesdays from 7–9 pm on the Zoom platform. The discussion groups consisted of 20 people.

The event is organised in collaboration with the literary education programme VAIKŲ ŽEMĖ. The strategic partner of Meno Avilys’s projects is the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

Contacts:
Dovilė Alėbaitė
dovile.alebaite@gmail.com
+370 618 12059