Guilty about child’s screen use

[1wokeuplikethis]

My 10 year old child is super intelligent and does really well at school. Comes home, does homework, puts clothes away/tidies room and then only want to be on screens in one form or another until bed (except for eating dinner together when no screens are allowed/on).

one night a week they have a club, but every other night they just want to chill on the sofa either gaming, or watching YouTube (which I loathe)

They have a bedroom full of books, Lego, toys, a garden with equipment and games but it’s incredibly hard to encourage them to do something else. It coincides with me finishing work and needing to get tea going or just sitting down and having a scroll on my phone myself. But I feel so guilty, like my child is rotting their childhood away on crappy games/apps/tablets.

any suggestions on how to encourage putting the screen down? Or what else they could do? I’ve asked if they went to try any other clubs but they’re not interested.

i feel like I’m letting them down as a mum. That I should play games with them, or have a kick about outside together, or something else to encourage them but also, I am tired at the end of my work day and don’t especially fancy a game of chess, say. I’m just not sure how to find a good balance.

That is ridiculous amount of screen time for a ten year old. I wouldn’t encourage her to put it down. I’d just remove it from her.

Do you mean they are home at 3.30pm and sit on screens until bed time (8.30pm?), so 5 hours. Or they are home at 5.30pm after after school club and sit on it for an hour before dinner? There’s a massive difference.

Either way, I totally understand how hard it is. In our house sport is non negotiable. My kids need to do swimming, a cardio based sport and a strength based sport as the bare minimum. Then they do after school club twice per week, and an after school language learning club one day. So their time is filled with more fulfilling things. Though I understand that not everyone can do that.

Watch a tv show together. It’s a different kind of screen time than gaming and YouTube and doesn’t reduce focus.
There’s so much good stuff. Get them into documentaries and some quality tv.

Tv is fine, most Netflix stuff is fine. Films are fine. If it has an actual plot & characters I'm usually fine with it.

YouTube is not fine. Mindless scrolling of reels / videos etc is banned in my house.

So you want them to stop watching screens, but you don't want to do anything with them because you're tired and you'd rather scroll your phone?

Kids follow the example they're shown. Either chill out about it, or lead by example and put your screen down to spend time with them.

Please read the book “the anxious generation” and take the iPad away xx

Limit it to one an hour an evening. That's what we do. The rest of the evening is Lego, garden, jigsaws etc

I really don't think it's a problem personally. I spent most of my childhood getting home from school, watching TV and eating chocolate spread out of the jar.

Oh have a day off!!! Cooking, baking and drawing. Who realistically has time to fanny about doing that all the time. These fake show off parents ✋🏻

Some great tips here. You have to acknowledge that the screens, particularly stuff like YouTube, are highly addictive. Most kids will use it in preference to other activities. It's like having chocolate cake and MacDonalds just freely available on the kitchen counter alongside broccoli and asking the kid to decide what they eat. That's why the only way to get them to do something else is to make the addictive screens unavailable.

I would just ban YouTube. No child needs YouTube. Then consider a time limit on other screens to make a bit of space for other activities. Set an example by having a rule that you don't use your phone in front of him (I have this rule and it's one of the only ways I can tackle my own screen addiction), but don't feel that if he's not at a club or on a screen, that means you have to be doing stuff with him. It's fine and even good for him to be bored. You will find that after some complaining he will start reading and playing by himself.

Think of it as training his brain to manage without constant stimulation. This is such an important thing to be able to do.

Erm me, as a single parent with a full time job

@1wokeuplikethis they won’t remember pre school age and all the things us mums do - but it’s what moulds them x