For much of my parenting career, I’ve taken a lax approach on the time limits imposed on my kids regarding the use of electronics devices. The rationalizations went something like this.
It’s educational – Look at the concentration and dedication required to build that village out of blocks and protect those pixelated horses from random fires.
They need an outlet – After being at school all day, they deserve some time to relax. That video game and a bag of goldfish is the kid version of mom’s book and a glass of wine.
What do pediatricians know anyway? Sure, they are experts but not all kids are the same. Maybe those time limit guidelines don’t apply to my kids.
After a long car trip parked in front of iPads, handheld video games, and the minivan movie theatre, those rationalizations came to a screeching halt. My son settled in his seat for our return trip home only to discover he’d left his iPad charger at grandma’s house. Based on his reaction to this realization, an innocent bystander would’ve thought we’d just told him we were sending him away to live with a new family.
He was horrified that he might not be able to charge his device even though he was sitting at full battery and had at least three other options to keep him entertained. He insisted we return back to grandma’s thirty minutes out of the way to retrieve this charger because he was convinced his very responsible and accommodating grandparents would intentionally delay shipping this to him out of spite. We refused and even explained we had plenty of extra chargers, but he was blinded by irrational anger.
One startling word entered my mind and it was so upsetting that I snapped like only mothers can snap – Addict.
“That’s it!” I yelled in the voice that causes everyone in the family to brace themselves for what might come next. It will either be a piece of brilliant parenting or an irrational response I’ll have to figure out how to backtrack on later without losing mom credibility points. In this case, it was a little bit of both.
“One hour per day! These devices have become too important to you! I’m telling Grandma not to ship your charger!”
Later when the kids were no longer paying attention, I asked my mostly rational husband if I’d overreacted.
“A little,” he told me. “We just need to be more diligent about enforcing the time limits we instituted while the kids were in school.”
He was right. Summer came and suddenly the rules were thrown out the window. They’d been allowed to spend entire days playing video games, watching television show re-runs, and saving the mine craft world one block at a time. In our defense, my husband and I both work so we aren’t always available to entertain our kids or get them out of the house for the afternoon. As long as they aren’t killing each other, we’re succeeding. That was our summer barometer of success. It’s no surprise that we found ourselves essentially staging an intervention with our own children.
We went cold turkey with my son for a few days and one morning, I heard his iPad dinging in the next room. When I picked it up to see what was happening, I saw pop-up notifications from various apps reminding him that he hadn’t logged in for a few days and he was risking the lives of his tribe. What? No wonder I was dealing with a 10 year old addict. This reinforced my belief that we needed a plan.
Below are a few things that have worked for our family when it comes to breaking the electronics addiction cycle. I’m sure our rules are more relaxed than some and stricter than others, but for now, it works for us.
Time Limits – Yes, one hour seemed logical and we stuck to that for a while, but I also understand that all days aren’t one size fits all. With school starting, these time limits are policing themselves. On days when my son has baseball, the use of electronics in the afternoon is the exception to the rule and on days when there are no extracurricular activities, homework and certain chores come first.
Physical Activity – Over the summer, we offered my son the option to earn extra video game time with outdoor, physical activity. He could ride his bike or play with friends. He even attended Boot Camp class with me a few times which was great. He got outside and earned the time he wanted while we spent time together.
A Privilege, Not a Right – It became painfully obvious that both my children felt that because these devices “belonged to them,” they got to choose when and how they were used. I found my son standing in front of the toilet using the restroom with his iPad parked right in front of his face. Aren’t there enough aiming issues without that distraction? This was one of the many events that caused my mom breakdown. I’m now quick to remove any electronics device if it’s being distracting or used in a way that will cause the kid’s bathroom to be dirtier than it already is.
I would like to offer a warning. Once this became a hot button issue for me, my kids were all too happy to point out my hypocrisy when I was checking my Facebook account while making dinner or reading email during family time. As frustrating as that can be, it’s good. Like so many realizations on this parenting journey, if I wanted my kids to do better, I needed to do better myself.
