I agree with all of these rules, but currently, these aren’t really the struggle. Sheer volume of screen time is.
Recently, there are two things in re: parenting that make my voice build to a shriek-like volume that is probably not ideal for optimal parenting.
The first is when my kids lie to me. (Duh.)
The second? Screens. Both of the television and smartphone variety. There’s no particular tipping point like number of hours on the couch or miles scrolling mindlessly in the car. (Or better yet: scrolling on their phone while watching tv! Bonus for the brain cells!)
I snap loudly after I sense they’ve been staring at a screen for much.too.long for their growing brains. No warning given, no limits broken. You could say it’s unfair, but I do it out of loving concern, which is my maternal justification.
I yell at them to read a book or go outside or talk to me or JUST GET OFF YOUR SCREEN!*
*The irony that I spend plenty of time on a screen for both work + personal reasons is not lost on me, but I am getting better about not being connected 24/7.
My loud, temporary, albeit absolutely not effective, solution lasts for a spell, and then we reset back to the beginning of screen-o-rama. (And yes, I’m particularly sensitive to this right now, given that it’s the 16th day of no school and, um, we gave our 11.5-year-old my old phone for Christmas. #hypocritemuch?)
I know kids have to be all ready for their technological-heavy futures; the volume of activity they do in Google classroom is simultaneously astounding and cool. They email with their teachers, which I love. Snapchat and GroupMe have replaced the telephone, and I want them to have a social circle and not feel excluded from plans.
That said, I also want them to be able to function without a device in their right hands. I want them to regularly opt for a book over Instagram, a conversation over a text, a board game over the video option. (To be fair, they do these things, but often not without my prompting.)
Are my kids too old for brilliance like this? I’m not sure.
My guess is that their ages—14.5 (9th grade), 11.5 (6th)—make strict limits harder to enforce, but I could be wrong.
Here’s what I’ve tried that hasn’t worked:
- Creating a 10-hour a week chart last summer for television programs. I’m not even sure we made it past the first week.
- Screaming at my kids to GET OFF THEIR SCREENS!
Here are the two things that have stuck:
- Phones get plugged in around 8 pm in the kitchen, and don’t get unplugged until ideally 8 am the next morning. (Early morning swim practice for the teenager has made the starting point null and void for her, but the general sentiment still holds.)
- No Netflix in bed. This took a few consequences (read: taking the phone away) to stick. With the exception of when my sisters or I were sick, we were not allowed to have televisions in our bedrooms when we grew up. I am still a believer in that rule; binge watching under the covers when it’s 11 am and sunny out just isn’t good for the mood or soul, in my opinion.
School starts again today (Praise Be!) and both of their schools have some great phone rules. In most of her high school classrooms, Amelia has to check her phone into an over-the-door shoe holder at the beginning of the class. In Ben’s middle school, phones stay in the locker from the first bell until the last—and if a student breaks that rule, the parent has to come retrieve the phone.
Still, next weekend is a three-day weekend, and I’m sure I’ll blow again before Saturday morning—a favorite screen battlefield time of mine—even arrives. I’d like to find a new solution in 2018 because nobody, including me, benefits from me losing my sh*t over screens.
What are your screen rules in re: limits for your offspring?
What works for you and your family?
(Parents of all ages of kiddos: feel free to weigh in!)
We have a 28 year old and when he comes home on vacations and breaks he also likes to binge watch Netflix. This year we asked him to be more aware, and I just ask him to be present with us when I feel he has disconnected from us. (Does it make you feel better that a 28 year old struggles with this still?) I prefer using a positive approach- although it is hard- as a personal discipline to make choices and be purposeful in my own use, and to encourage our son to connect with something else, like baking with us or playing a game. Pet peeve as an educator in a high school- parents texting their kids during classes.
No advice, just solidarity here. Going through the same thing with my 12 and 15 year olds. They homeschool so the gadgets are a temptation 24/7. The one rule that we have is no gadgets at all until after 3pm and they have to be turned off by 9pm. It sort of works. They are both into sports so that keeps them busy many evenings, but when they have days off (and on weekends), like you said, the struggle is real.
14 & 17 and everything you say is true. I’m a hypocrite (and they are sure to remind me), I’m irrational in when I decide to lose my schmidt (and they are sure to tell me), and we have many rules, which they generally follow. The big thing is how much time. I will say the 17 yo is better, likely because he drives and has a life? 100% agree with devices plugged in a central location by a set hour. I flex that on non-school days, but I am shocked by how often their phones are lighting up with messages at late hours. One other rule I would recommend to augment 7 & 8 is “No taking photos of people without their knowledge”. Quite a number of adults could use that guidance, too, based on the stranger ridiculing I see on Facebook. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Yes love the solidarity! This is a parenting issue our parents never had to deal with and it’s huge. My 2 dd’s still at home are 16 & 18 and our most important rule is no phones overnight. Like you, they plug them in at night. All our bedrooms are upstairs so they plug them in at a power strip just outside our bedroom door so we can easily see that they’re there on time & still there in the morning. Having it by their bed (or IN bed by their head, more likely) makes me crazy. They need their sleep without checking that blue screen. Blue light (like screens) increases risk of anxiety & depression and teens just don’t need more of that! Best of luck to all of us!
Totally relate to everything in your post re: my 13 & 15 yo kids-including the part about my own phone use (although reading the AMR blogpost first thing in the morning counts as a positive way to use my phone :) ). My best strategy to date has been to use an app called mypact which is on my phone and installs something on theirs. You can set regular hours for blocking their phone on specific days of the week (e.g., on weekend mornings their phones are blocked until noon). You can also use the option to block their phone “until I say so”! When their phones are blocked they can still talk and text but they can’t use any apps. I think OurPact includes more features now but I’ve found the basic ones super useful-it takes at least some of the arguing out of the equation!
Totally relate to everything in your post re: my 13 & 15 yo kids-including the part about my own phone use (although reading the AMR blogpost first thing in the morning counts as a positive way to use my phone :) ). My best strategy to date has been to use an app called mypact which is on my phone and installs something on theirs. You can set regular hours for blocking their phone on specific days of the week (e.g., on weekend mornings their phones are blocked until noon). You can also use the option to block their phone “until I say so”! When their phones are blocked they can still talk and text but they can’t use any apps. I think OurPact includes more features now but I’ve found the basic ones super useful-it takes at least some of the arguing out of the equation!
We use Norton on our children’s electronics. It is helpful, but not perfect. We are a homeschool family involved in a homeschool assistance program. While my high school son is only in two classes, the communication is still through emodo and google classroom. There is a fine line between too much restriction and just enough privilege to grow responsibility. We require no phone between 9 pm and 8 am. Phones stay downstairs plugged in and norton helps us control the hours spend on devices.
I just had conversation with my 16 yo on phone use. I need to get tougher on them. I won’t let them be on their phones when they ride with me to and from town (7 miles). I might start to take their phones when they are to be doing chores or homework.
Ugh. This is so hard for me. At 10, Addy doesn’t have a phone (yet…). But she does have an ipad mini, and she uses that (or MY precious phone!) to communicate with friends. I love to use the excuse that as an only child, she just doesn’t have the normal sibling interactions. But let’s be real, I wasn’t playing with my siblings all that much.
So many of the ideas I’ve heard seem unrealistic – a mom from school said her kids earn 15 minutes of screen time for practicing their instruments. Um, what? But then on the other end of the spectrum are her friends who are singing and dancing to some app while we are in line at Panera, trying to order lunch amongst 50 other people.
Oh, and screen time at the never-ending swim meets? We bring card games, but that never happens….and I’m so brain-dead from being up before the sun to pack snacks and get to the meet, I don’t have the energy to suggest a card game, let alone participate in one! Hoping for some good advice in these comments. ;)
You’ve established good boundaries with your rules. With regard to content of texting, I made it a point to share news articles about students who posted inappropriate content, and or bullied other kids, and the consequences which resulted from those actions. In several cases kids lost college scholarships, internships, etc. Same happens with regularity with adults, who can forget Rep. Anthony Weiner. I reinforced this on a regular basis. Many kids are using the app SnapChat which allows whatever is posted to ‘disappear’ within a set amount of time. I blocked use of this app, and some gaming, via the controls on the phone or via phone provider when rules weren’t being followed.
I have 14 and 16 y.o. daughters. Screen time is a different struggle with both. For my 16 y.o., the struggle is stopping the binge-watching or binge snapchatting to interact with us. As snapchat is her major communication platform, I don’t relish taking it away but have regular talks about being safe. The positive is that we eat breakfast and dinner as a family almost every day and there are no phones at the table or during family activities. My 14 year old is NOT into technology at all – she doesn’t text, keyboard or write so I’m not sure how she is going to communicate. However, she has found her way around almost all security features in order to read smutty books so I had to take the internet off of her phone and downgrade her ipad (I couldn’t take her internet off of it) to G-level movies, books, etc. Gaaaaa! My kids have their phones at school but understand they are only to communicate if critical.
Screen time is such a timely and appropriate conversation. I deal with this with my 2 year old watching YouTube kids on my phone at the same time as a the tv is on. My older daughter I am more strict and follow the no screens at all until homework is done. She hates doing homework, so often never even gets screen time before bed time. On the weekends I just let it go, if her behavior is good and she is responsive to my requests then she can do what she wants. It’s her general lack of responsiveness while watching the screen that puts me over the edge. Then I just take it away. No One watches anything. It’s definetly a balancing act.
Parent of 19 yr old girl and 11.5 yr old boy here. When she was younger we had a strict no-device in the bedroom rule, which we enforced until she was about 17. Then we had her leave her phone and laptop outside her room overnight. Now we give her more freedom – there’s only so long you can police for I think. With the 11.5 boy, we have no tv on weekdays in the morning, no device time until he’s eaten breakfast, bag packed and ready for school (he then gets about 20 mins and it works to motivate him to get packed etc). No devices in the afternoon except on the way home from school in the car (about 10 mins), and occasional tv time after dinner. Weekends are the bad days for screen times – he is limited to 3 screen times each weekend day, no more than an hour each. I’m not going to pretend he doesn’t go over the time limit, but I try to be strict about it. It’s so hard to know how much is too much!
I feel your pain – this is the biggest struggle we have right now with 2 teenagers (16 & 14) (I should be thankful that this is our biggest struggle we’re facing, but it’s still a struggle). I use an app called OurPact, much to my children’s dismay. On the free version, you can set schedules to turn their devices on and off at certain times (it’s like magic!), and on the one you pay for monthly, you can set combined time limits across multiple devices for each child. We haven’t switched to the paid version yet, although I’ve been close at times of extreme frustration after hours of screen time. It’s not perfect as it wouldn’t limit TV time or X-Box time, but it would limit iPhone & ipad time. Anyway, that’s the best we’ve come up with for now.
Oh no! Now Ben has a phone too!!! Only 2 kids left in their “group”, how will I make it to J’s birthday in September?? In our house screens don’t go off the main floor- no hiding in basement and no bedrooms. This does not help with the issue of time limits. I need a timer in every device that only allows a give number of total minutes per day.
I’m really interested in how other handle this. My kids are younger and we aren’t big screen people; they have to do homework and pickup before they can have screens during the week. But we are about to give our voracious reader and kindle for her birthday. I feel like we can’t tell her she can’t have it at night because she will want to read on it. But I don’t want her watching Netflix in bed.
This is a very hot topic in many of my circles! Like many of you, my husband and I set boundaries for our three kids (ages 15, 12, & 10) for screen time. But last summer we started to use Circle by Disney and it really has helped. We set time limits per app and total time allowed online specific to each child. Only my oldest has a cell phone, and Circle by Disney works on her phone out of the house. I still can’t see the actual content but feel I have more control over their screens
This is so timely it’s almost creepy. Not two days before this blog entry I had post on my FB wall a request for advice on this very topic, bemoaning (read: whining) that I’m forced to deal with this issue with my 12 and 8 year old kids. someone even posted that same picture in the comments!! I got a lot of votes for Circle, I see that has been mentioned here, as well. Another snarky neighbor mentioned he finds a hammer to be effective (to be clear: for the screens).
I LOVE this post! I’m trying to Pin it so I can refer to it later, but it says “the image is too small.” :(
I love this post so much Dimity!