My 7-year-old does not have any screen time limits. He has his own tablet and laptop, though he still seems to prefer using his dad’s laptop. I wish he’d use screens less, but I can’t exactly say we are good role models in that respect!
I feel mostly okay about it for the following reasons:
His dad is with him anytime he’s on screens and does pay attention and make him change it when it’s something he doesn’t approve of.
He does move his body—he’s never been one of those kids who is hypnotized by screens. He’ll carry his tablet all around the house while he’s doing stuff.
He is also creative. Not 100% of the time, but a lot. He doesn’t rely on the device to do his thinking.
He will drop the screen anytime to play with other kids, and we have next door neighbors who do have screen time limits, so he’s outside with them a ton.
I got my daughter Animal Crossing on the Switch for her 5th birthday (the Switch itself being my birthday present this year), so we set up our island this weekend.
We’ve been doing 30-60 min at a time in party mode as we figure the game out, and we sure are testing our frustration tolerance, both joint and individual.
We are in the stage of learning to make good screen decisions with Pikelet. She is 8.
I don’t really put a limit on screen time on the weekends anymore. If we are going out I’ll turn them off to get ready but when we are home I try to allow more freedom with reminders that she is often upset if the weekend ends and she hasn’t got to do anything “exciting”. Also that both of their moods aren’t great after too much screen time (probably the lack of movement). I offer alternatives and ask if she has something else she would like to do before the weekend runs out. We are also talking about the things we miss out on when we are focused on screens. Waffles (4) is here for the discussions too but I don’t expect him to really be getting it.
I think we are getting somewhere with Pikelet. She is turning the TV off herself and doing other activities without prompting or tell us things she wants to do instead that will require parental assistance… sometimes.
Screens in our house are only TV and Switch still. The iPad for school starts next year.
The school is reviewing their iPad policy for lower grades soon and requesting parental feedback. I hate the idea of 4 year olds starting school with their own iPad in the classroom? Am I just very old now?
So our time limit is now Wednesdays and weekends. Basically unlimited those days but easier for B2 and I to understand. Otherwise I’ll out on a show of convenience or they’ll try to reason with me. B1 is usually not hypnotized but it can help him slow down and regulate. He actually likes slower content too. The only thing that puts him in a bad mood are sped up tutorials- lego builds or tiny cake making are an issue (but also something he loves). B2 loves fast, hypnotizing things with very little upside. It’s easier to avoid that content because we generally watch TV/movies on the TV.
I do worry about addiction and what screens are replacing. Also about things like eye tracking and eye strain but less so. I’m trying to work on limiting short form content for myself because even though I spent half an hour reading about the Armenian genocide yesterday I was more able to look up and discuss, plus tell my kids more about more genocides (I didn’t, but I would have). I wish I had a grown up to enforce it.
B1 has been getting bored and being dysregulated a lot lately so I’ve been considering seeing if we set up his tablet and letting him use it for Libby or a game. Anyone have thoughts or resources about using games for boredom and regulation?
I’m also considering letting B2 do khan academy kids on Wednesdays. I feel that game helped B1 a lot when he was learning the alphabet and B2 is at a stage where he’s almost there.
Our board thankfully can’t afford individual tablets, but I found out the daily lesson is always a video. Why have a teacher if the day lesson is a video.
Kiddo had shared classroom Chromebooks last year and this year they all have their own Chromebooks but in the classroom only and they have to put them on a charging cart at the end of the day. This lets them access some programs that (for 8, 9, 10 year olds) have short articles for them to read and then answer questions about and a couple different math programs to teach multi-digit addition, multiplication, fractions, decimals, etc. and they get feedback immediately if they missed a question plus the teacher gets data about what questions the kids are missing. One of the math programs has them do facts (basically flashcards but as games) until they earn their “green light”, which is nice because in the afternoon I can ask if he’s earned his green light yet and if he has then that’s one less homework thing he has to do.
For the short articles one, the kids can pick from a list of articles that the teacher has selected for them (so she picks, say, ten articles and the kids choose what strikes their interest from that ten). Then once they get through the 4-8 questions if they get over a 75% the computer plays a little chime and everyone in the class cheers for them which is sweet.
Neither of these things happen every day, it’s another tool for the teacher to use or not use.
Oh, today another screen thing is that the kids are putting together a Google Slides presentation on the topic of their choice and then presenting it to the class as an end of year project. I think the kids played around with Google Slides earlier in the year but this is the first time they’re trying to put together an actual project.
I’m sure this all varies from school to school, or even classroom to classroom. And this definitely wasn’t starting with individual devices at age 4 or 5!
I don’t remember who it was, someone on this forum talked about making the “rule” be that you check off the important things and then do whatever you want - screens otherwise.
I haven’t really come up with a system. And the boys are too old for a “system” per se, and also I think it is fine to alternate screens and other things.
I care about:
-Time outdoors/moving your body
-Contributing to the household
-Reading and learning
-Creation - writing, making art, anything in that vein
-Homework
-Probably other things that are not immediately coming to mind
Just did a whole day of sick mama TV with a tablet break and a collage break. B1 wouldn’t engage with his tablet which is unfortunate. Wild Kratts is a current winner here. B2 engaged well with Khan Academy kids and I do want to rotate it in more to reinforce his literacy preskills.
Anythoughts on games or other stuff with good social emotional skill building?
I don’t remember, have you tapped into the wider PBS Kids games app? There’s Daniel Tiger and all kinds of other stuff but it may also be too many other options. I should be able to recall more of what’s on there but very little is coming to mind right now.
I had a chat to Pikelet’s teacher about it yesterday and I was wrong! The email we got was vague and requested P-3 parents to attend a session about changes to the byo ipad program and I assumed that meant extending it to lower grades.
What they actually want to do is change it to grade 5 instead of grade 4 and swap from iPads to laptops.
She was saying that they didn’t foresee the social implications of giving kids 8 and 9 essentially giant phones and that because of the way they work on the school’s network and with the IT department, parents aren’t currently able to do much at all to put parental controls on for home use.
She also said that current program (which probably won’t change for next year) is optional and that if she could do it over with her older daughter she would have opted out because of the pressure once they had the iPad to be using social media and messaging apps and everything that comes along with that. It definitely seems like the school has a big enough problem with online bulling the upper grades to consider this change. I guess switching to a laptop might help with Instagram and tik tok but they still have messenger apps and whatnot?
At the moment the lower grades all have a set of 12 iPads that they use during rotation activities and they have a STEM lab where the whole class can work on either iPads or computers for a lesson.