I knew this time in my life would be the right period to blog about screen time. A time when my kids would have more screen time than maybe ever before.
After leaving the fall which plagued my family with repeated bouts of illness, I suspected winter would bring a similar flavor and it surely met my expectations. As a matter of fact, the overlapping illnesses surpassed even my wildest dreams. Sometimes an illness gracing my family with not just one cycle, but two! It’s really been wild.
And with each illness that hits, the child and parental exhaustion multiplies leaving us with few activities that pass the day. Games can be hard to concentrate on. The fatigue sets in and the thought of outdoor play is draining. And our usual routine is paused while we wait for the germs that took over our house to finally take their exit.
The screens have been powered on far more than is usually part of our routine.
But that’s part of the stress of illnesses, they wreck havoc on our routines. Instead of planned meals, we eat whatever our bellies can handle. Some of us looking for soup, and others for their typical four course meal. Sleep is completely out of whack as kids are up coughing or feverish with ear aches that keep them and their parents up most of the night. And after several days of sleepless nights, who is counting the screen time hours by that point?
Except that we all thrive on routines, including screen time routines.
Thinking back to my own childhood, I watched television at certain times. Certainly, you could pop a movie in to a VHS player but it wasn’t often I did that during the day (at least that I can remember). I usually had to wait until my favorite shows were on to view them. I knew what time they were on and grew accustom to planning my days around my favorite ones. Friday nights were reserved for TGIF and Saturday nights for family movie nights. Hearing my husband also watched those same family movies on Saturday nights only now makes me realize why we started incorporating that into our own family weekend routine.
Yes, there was a sense of routine about television when I was growing up. I knew when to expect I would be watching it based on my favorite shows and when our family wasn’t involved in other activities. And when I was sick, is usually when those videos were popped into the VHS. But otherwise, television and screen time was very routine. I didn’t have a hard time turning it off because the show just ended. I could get up to go to the bathroom or grab a glass of water without screaming, “Pause it!” to my siblings because there was always commercials. I feel as though screen time was a sort of respite for parents back in the day but has become a mixed picture of respite and stress for those parenting now.
Because with tablets and televisions, streaming and vast programming, making screen time part of our routine is much harder now. In fact, some of my favorite parenting experts even have posts and podcasts directed towards how to get kids to turn off devices and move onto the next activity. It’s hard even for many adults to not get sucked into watching episode after episode of their favorite series.
Unlike eating at a buffet where eventually, your belly will tell you to stop, starting at screens can be hard to realize when we have had too much. If it interferes with sleep or causes too much eye strain, we certainly recognize it but otherwise, it can be hard to control ourselves.
And it can be hard for our kids to find control as well. It is no longer up to the network who airs the favorite kids cartoons on Saturday mornings and a family movie at night with boring golf tournaments and ads during the day to entice us to turn it off and get up and out of the house. It is up to our own self-control to say, no more screen time. And even if we can entice ourselves and our kids off of one device, there’s usually several others within reach. It is no wonder screen time is such a hot topic.
Then add in screen time at school we might not even know is happening and time with baby-sitters and childcare, our children’s screen time can really start to add up without us even realizing it. The negative effects of that being that some other things took a back seat that day, like perhaps homework, outdoor play, or even sleep.
So how do we find routine in screen time today? How can we balance both the positive and negative effects of screen time and avoid the guilt of feeling like we have all overindulged?
This is a question I have thought about a lot. How do I balance my kids wanting to watch television and play games and activities on their video games or iPad? How do I make it part of their routine?
The AAP has a great resource for writing it all out and formulating a screen time plan for your family. And it looks like a great tool that could be helpful so I included it below.
However, I wasn’t sure it was going to work for my family. I needed something that didn’t feel quite as much like a plan but more of a routine.
So I started to think about my own experience as a kid and when I watched television. I thought about the time pockets where I enjoyed “screen time” and decided to incorporate them into my children’s routine and my own.
First, I do not worry about screen time when my kids are sick. There is a lot of stress in the house with sick kids and no one needs to be adding in worry or guilt about how much time we are sitting in front of the television. I do tend to have my kids stare at a tv though when their sick rather than a screen because I find they are less likely to get headaches and feel worse. There’s also usually one other person not feeling well so they at least have company and don’t feel isolated when they are watching something on a communal device.
But when we can finally re-enter our routine, I started thinking about what our screen time routine would look like in my home. I found it important for my kids in knowing what to expect in terms of screen time so they weren’t always asking me if they could watch tv or play their video games, making it feel like I had haphazard control over something they enjoyed.
Below is how my husband and I have started to build screen time into our routine. There are still some kinks we need to work out but I have found that it helps keep us all on the same page and diffuse a lot of arguments about when it’s time to turn it all off and unplug! This is what works for our house but perhaps, you can find a routine that works for you too.
1. Saturday mornings are the only mornings we turn on the television — and reserved for cartoons.
I will preface this with, when my older two were young, we actually often turned on the television every morning while they did their asthma treatments. Back then, they both required an inhaled steroid via a nebulizer and in order to get them to sit still for the treatment, I used television as a tool. However, as they grew older, I started noticing that mornings we turned on the television to occupy them when they woke up earlier than expected, actually led to even earlier mornings the next day. started resulting in an earlier morning the next day. Like clockwork, they would wake up and come down asking to watch the tv far earlier than their usual bedtime. It was almost as if as soon as they started to rouse, they would pop up ready to watch tv. So we decided to give them one day a week where they could expect to watch cartoons when they woke up. After a long week of school, they are often tired on Saturday mornings so they don’t usually wake up too early. But it lets my husband sleep in a bit and me to drink my coffee in peace and either check labs, write, or catch up on other items on my desk. It helps us ease in our Saturday morning. And there is usually a sport event that helps prompt when to turn off the devices on Saturday mornings.
2. We deemed Saturday and/or Sunday afternoons, during nap time when we don’t have another function going on, as a good time for video games or iPad apps from school. It keeps my older rambunctious boys quiet while their younger brother sleeps and allows their dad and I to get a few things done around the house.
3. Saturday evenings are our movie nights. We start them at dinnertime and let our kids watch while they eat their dinner (which is often pizza!). Either we order out from our favorite pizzeria, order from a restaurant, or make our own but it is usually some form of pizza.
4. My kids know when I have an important phone call or I need to exercise and can’t fit it in otherwise, they get television. It’s virtually impossible to do downward dog without a child wanting to crawl through, using you as a bridge or to really get the same relaxation from jogging when kids are fighting in the background. So, when I can’t otherwise fit in a workout, my kids can expect that they are going to get screen time of their choice.
5. My kids also know when it’s a weeknight that we aren’t heading out to something, they are probably going to get some screen time while I cook dinner. After they empty their backpacks and head outside or build their 100th fort of the year, they often wrap up for a half hour with a show they all agree on. My kids rarely use tablets except when we are traveling because I want them to learn to agree on something to watch and to enjoy a program with their brothers. They all get to take turns choosing which also cuts down on them having the repeated effects of instant gratification of whatever they want on, when they want it. Where there isn’t a networking controlling the programming, there is a brother whose choice dictates it. Some weeks it’s a few times a week, and some weeks its none. It’s where they learn to be a little flexible and actually don’t mind letting their siblings choose because it’s not an every night event so regardless of what they are watching, it’s exciting for them. And for me. Because that is how I’ve been able to pull off cooking safely without three boys running the halls and knocking me over or running over my toys (all have happened). I can focus on the food, the ingredients, and avoid burning our dinner. I enjoy cooking so popping on some classical music and letting them watch something quietly is the recharge we need some nights before we sit down to eat and talk.
6. And my kids can expect a movie night with young baby-sitters and new sitters. I like to warm them up and find offering pizza and a movie, helps keep everyone safer, out of trouble, and our sitters more likely to come back with three boys!
Thinking back to my childhood, this is very similar to the routine I had as a kid. It might seem like our Saturdays are heavy with screens but I’m ok with that. Many of our Saturdays are also filled with heading out of town or other activities like birthday parties, skiing, hiking, festivals, or sporting events. It just depends but when we are home, my kids know what to expect. And when they are bored during the times in between, I remind them that the last time they were bored, they found something to do!
Having screen time as part of our routine, my kids don’t ask me frequently about when they can watch tv when I’m home or play a game, they know. And turning off the tv is even easier when they know its to move onto the next part of our routine. But I do try not to turn off the television mid program because I remember as a kid having to leave when a show was still on and it can be tough. Even as an adult, who wants to turn it off mid-show?
And I know in our house there will be breaks in our routine. Holidays, school breaks, and summers we will have to adjust the routine. But that’s expected — our routines change during those times anyway. But I try to keep some of the basics of our routine in terms of sleep, outdoor time, and our nutrition, accepting many parts of our routine will change, including screen time. But by now, my kids expect that change in routine from their normal, and I know to expect more questions about screen time.
This is what works for us but I highly suggest having some sense of routine to your children’s screen time. It helps everyone to know what to expect and as we know, we all thrive on routine!
Wishing you and your families an early spring with relief from all of these back to back illnesses!
Take good care,
