Slave to the Smartphone. A Zombie guide to bad parenting.

"Come on mum, push us, we've been here for 3 flipping hours!"

I swore I'd never do this. I swore I wouldn't. In fact I've even mocked parents mercilessly before for doing precisely this. Zombing out on their smartphones while their children look on, wondering what on earth is so flipping important that it's worth glueing your eyeballs to instead of paying attention to what your child is doing.

Part of the reason I never upgraded my phone was that I secretly knew that owning a device that could let you read email, view web pages or prat around on Twitter would be like the kiss of death to an already meandering attention span but when I got my new phone, it became all too tempting to just dive on, unlock, dive into an app and twiddle around.

Princess C deserves better than that. We both do it (my wife and I) and though there are times as a parent where you're more than a little bit fed up of playing yet another round of 'shopkeepers' or really do not want to play that horrible "Tooth Fairy" game C's grandparents bought her, diving into a virtual world of tweeters and emailers is like turning your back on your child and saying "Sorry, this is more important". It's bloody rude really isn't it. So my pledge is to ensure that the phone goes off when I get home from work every night, and does not go on again until I head off for work in the morning.

Could you do the same? Bet you couldn't...!