To want to kiss this mother's feet

[Imogenlasting]

A lot of kids the same age on our road, constantly in and out of each others' houses. As a result, trying to limit your own child's screen time is really difficult because they just call around to a friend's house, whose allowed screen time is different, and watch stuff on their ipad instead.

One of the mums has asked if a group of us whose children hang around together would be interested in getting together to co-ordinate allowed times on screens so that wherever the kids gather, they will still only be glued to tablets, phones etc for the allowed number of hours per day.

My sister, who I told about it, thinks it's a daft idea, but after a wet bank holiday weekend here in Dublin AIBU to think it's a great plan.

It's a good idea and will work in a tight-knit group like you seem to have.

Some children can self-regulate their screen time, some can't. I think if you have children who are not screen obsessed you can struggle to understand the problem and why it needs a solution. I have four DC. One who does not need any limits, she self-regulates. I have one who is utterly obsessed and if allowed would spend every minute of every day glued to a screen. He loves lots of things, but there is not a single thing he would choose over staring at a screen. The other two are somewhere in the middle. I can see that if you only had one type of child you could find screen limits either completely unnecessary or absolutely vital and maybe struggle to understand the other side of the coin.

I think the other thing is a lot of people don't have the 'children in and out of each other's houses' community feeling that you do and therefore perceive anything that involves co-ordinating with the neighbours as an almost impossible task.

I have exactly the same issue with my screen obsessed DC and the neighbours so I understand totally where you are coming from!

I think it would work better in summer when they can play out more.

When it's raining my ds and the neighbours ds's spend their time on the PlayStation, when it's nice weather they're out on their bikes.

Thanks Nuffsaid.

Brand, definitely I agree it's harder to keep them away from screens on cold, rainy days. But I still don't want them glued to the ipad all the time, or whining for it when it's removed. As I said, when we were on holidays in a 'no broadband' area, they and their cousins still had great fun on wet days playing indoor games and also read for a while, because they just knew screens weren't an option.

I think everything in moderation needs to apply and I am willing to try anything within reason that would help with that.

WTF!!

Ok, second attempt:

Are you serious Quint? You really don't think there are kids around nowadays who do all those things?

Somebody ought to give them ipads!

As for the first bit of copy and paste diarrhea, I will ask mnhq to delete!

One of the excuses a lot of people make for their kids bad behaviour is '"well at least they're outside playing and not at home glued to their x-box", so I don't really think bad behaviour and screen use are mutually exclusive.