Screen time once they start to use it for school

[TheWordsmithsApprentice]

How do you regulate screen time once they start to use more screens for school?

DS's handwriting is terrible (dyspraxia) and I'd like him to learn to type properly. This isn't a school thing, so he's allowed to do this during the week. Otherwise iPad/Switch is only allowed at the weekend, after all homework is done, 2 hours a day.

However, they are increasingly being referred to apps for things like times tables, vocab, spellings etc and they are starting to argue they should be allowed this during the week and it shouldn't count as screen time.

DS 11 has also expressed an interest in coding. Should this count as extra time or part of his two hours? I'm going around in circles, he will never willingly choose to do something that he has to put effort into; so if I say it's part of his limit, then he'll probably go for gaming rather than trying to learn coding.

How do you distinguish between "worthwhile" screen activity and pure gaming or mindless YouTube activity? 11 year old (dyspraxia, asd) will not self limit on screens, 9 year old will to a certain extent.

I wouldn't class school work as leisure screen time or if he's learning to code, I think that skills that could be used in a workplace are very useful.
My 8 year old daughter loves making animated videos and wants to go into the animated film industry so I don't discourage her creativity.

I'm stricter when it comes to playing games and YouTube.

You may better moving away from number of hours to time of day. As mine got older I didn't set a time limit, but it was things like not before school, not after dinner, screen free Sunsay afternoons. It is much less stressful than trying to decide how to classify screen time.

You may better moving away from number of hours to time of day.

I think you might be right, I need to see how I can implement some consistent rules, especially as the weather starts to turn. Although I don't want him to ignore non-screen life entirely!