Feel horrible about my kids screen time

[waterrat]

My children rely too much on screens...ask for them in the morning or any moment when they aren't busy. I think we are a pretty normal family and probably have similar screen use to others but I feel a bit depressed by it. It definitely affects other things.

My 8 year old is bright but literally doesn't read. I worry that without thr push of boredom. She just never feels thst driven to get lost in a book as I did as a child.

They both do plenty of other things. Football...drawing....playing with friends. But I just feel the screens have crept up on us and have displaced reading in particular.

Has anyone successfully made a shift away from reliance in screens at home

Eg. On a train at the moment and 8 year old us on her ipad. I brought books and stuff she just isn't interested. I know I should be tougher but I'm tired and she has asd and is quite hard work so I'm being lazy....aargh. guilt.

Makes me sad you got no replies on this, you were clearly reaching out OP. I also worry hugely about my son’s screen time, when the weather is nicer I try to make sure that he is out at the skate park, the park, the beach, clubs etc, but at the moment the weather is so bloody miserable that he just comes home and goes straight on his switch.. I came on Mumsnet to try to find threads about screen time- if you see this and you want to chat I’m up for it! 🥰

Same!! Agree with OP that unless screens are banned they won't read- so we regularly ban screens and force boredom! Then they play together, do football cards, read etc. DS9 has a football manager notepad/clipboard set that is good to get him to write and think about things too.

The amount of screen time a child gets is entirely up to the parents. My son is 7 and we have a complete ban on screens until 5pm when he can watch 2-3 episodes of something on TV. Absolutely no tablet time (even so called “educational” games).

We regularly make long train journeys to visit family and he can either read, draw, do homework or play games with us.

I am very relaxed about screen time, but I have two children who seem to be willing to immediately switch them off when I say enough is enough. Because I am very relaxed about screens it does mean that we often don’t use screens at obvious points. So for instance I never allow devices for travel as it’s an obvious really good opportunity to force them to do something different, and to engage with them. I don’t really monitor screen time but I do measure quality. So my youngest has recently been watching the bbc Earth documentary - that doesn’t count at all in my opinion, but after 3 episodes of transformers I’ll be suggesting it’s time to switch and do something else soon. Same for games, they’re not actually allowed any trash games like candy crush, and Roblox I limit, but things like minecraft, Zelda, parkosaurus I’m more relaxed about as they’re ‘proper’ experiences.

As for reading my older child is a great reader but found it hard to get into reading to themselves, through pure laziness, but we had success with a couple of series. I also still read to him every night as he does enjoy listening to me read to him so we broaden his horizons that way.

I notice you said she has ASD? Sometimes (not always, before I get jumped on) screen time is a more effective time downtime for ASD children. Also my son doesn't find reading relaxing as he can't picture it in his head when he reads like other people. He is literally just reading the words so it isn't as absorbing and he doesn't want to.

My ds is on his switch or YouTube a lot. I think most of them are.

But if we are travelling or going anywhere he might be bored he takes a book. And we have a 'no-screens upstairs' rule so he tends to read in bed.

We had quite a lot of power cuts last winter and ds took calmly to reading a book by lamplight. 🙂