My child does the majority of their school work on a school iPad. All communication between teachers and students is done through email, assignments are mostly done online, in class work and research for topics is also done in the iPad. There are of course strong content controls on the iPads, but they all have YouTube, games, internet browsers, etc installed on them.
This has become a massive issue for my child. He cannot focus on the required homework task because he is constantly lured in by the games and YouTube videos so easily accessible on the iPad. Aside from sitting with him and yelling at him to stop going on the 'fun' apps, does anyone have any tips for helping them focus on their actual work?
Every night is a battle. The process of a simple amount of homework is drawn out into several hours because he will be constantly distracted and watching YouTube. He's sneaky and turns the sound down. I will go over to make sure he's still working on his homework and if I get there quick to catch him in the act before he can flick away, I will more often than not catch him watching YouTube or playing an online game.
In addition to the distractions, I find the iPad fiddly and harder to use for creative things like projects, reports, etc than a good old paper and pens. I also think the lack of physically writing something down in a notebook for him to think about and physically see the words he's writing is affecting his work and retention of the information.
Has anyone else dealt with a situation like this before? To make things more complicated I believe he likely has ADHD and ASD. Can I ask the school to put specific measures in place for him to reduce the amount of ipad work? Or put a blocker on YouTube and the games? I don't really know what is an acceptable ask of them and also if what I'm requesting (the blockers and more physical work on paper) will even be considered.