To ask what do your kids do without tech?

[Chessandjam]

I have an 8 year old son. His tablet time is limited to 2.5 hours a day in the week, but I find it increasing on a weekend, when I have to work or get stuff done.

He goes to organised clubs and activities (Cubs, sports, music), but his home time is spent on his tablet, or drawing characters from his games when his tablet is off. When I say let’s play, he wants me to print pictures of his characters to cut out and play with. I want him to do other things of his own choosing - how do I encourage this, without organising him?? Help! What do your kids do??

I don't really see the problem. My DC has had first games consoles then computers since young age and now he knows how to create computer games and viruses

I think your DS and my DGS would get on very well

if he likes to draw the characters or have you print them off to play with, could you get him the actual figures for Xmas? then he can play with them without you having to print and cut.

mine are 5 and 10. alot of time is spent playing with characters from off their TV shows. theres nothing inherently wrong with that. they draw, play Lego, the younger ones like board games. and yes they have screens. the older one has minecraft, they share Skylanders, they play games on my phone but they're all ones that require creativity or brains. they don't scroll and even if eldest has kids YouTube he's learning about something.

Those of us who are older brought up children without tech and I severely restricted tv too, as DD never stops reminding me (she’s hooked).
Whenever it was fine they played in the garden or were on their bikes
Indoors -
puzzles
Board games
lego
drawing
cooking
reading
Star Wars figures and vehicles provided endless fun

An eight year old should be reading to you in the morning while you feed baby and you should be finding time to read to him.

Great that you've got him in a coding club OP. My advice would be to check out Scratch (it's free) and may well be what he uses at the club. It's a fab introduction to coding. It's for 8-16 year olds although there's also scratch junior for 5-7 so you could look at both. DS started out like that and is now working as a software engineer.

So I checked his screen time, since the end of August he has spent between 19 and 37 hours a week on his tablet 😔 I’ve already cut down his daily limit to 2hrs (I’m trying to do it gradually), and he only has 30 mins this morning before having breakfast at 7.15. He’s never going to stay in bed and read in the morning, he knows I’ll be up with the baby and wants to see what we’re doing. I’m going to try and tidy up and organise his toys this week so that everything is easier to access.

A lot of people have been quite hard on you for the amount of screen time, I just wanted to say that I understand how you got there.

We also do tablet time first thing in the morning - which started when the kids were very early risers and we just needed them to be quiet for a while. Yes lazy parenting, I am sure many on this thread would judge this but for a while the kids were up at 5am and we were just not able to be switched on active parents at that time. Then I can see how you got to some tablet time after school to decompress and then again to occupy him while you put the baby to bed.

But what I have learned is that as easy as it is to rely on tablets as an electronic babysitter, it is important for kids to occupy themselves and play and read.

With your son, I wonder if the age gap with the baby isn't helping things - it sounds like you feel like he needs to be occupied when you are dealing with the baby but perhaps involving him with the baby might work? My 9 year old son absolutely adores his baby cousin and does stuff like setting up an obstacle course for the (crawling) baby

Does your son read at all? A comic subscription or magazine subscription of some sort might be good for him?

Thank you! It does sound a lot over the week, but it doesn’t feel a lot during a normal day, so it has been easy to slip into until you sit back and think about it.

You’re right that the age gap isn’t easy, and again the tablet is simple because it keeps Lego/paint/unsuitable toys out the hands of baby at times when I may be distracted (meal times etc). He does play with baby in the morning between breakfast and school, but at baby’s bedtime he’s just too hyper to be calm and involved. But it’s just occurred to me whilst writing this that he could get out what he wants at baby’s bedtime to play with, he can be occupied then with something else.

thank you for your understanding.

I absolutely get what you’re saying as there are stretches of parenting that can be diabolically exhausting when they’re young, but I do wonder what leads people down different paths.

I remember the 5 am starts too but my child was 2 years old at that time and I remember friends who handed them an iPad to get through the morning. I just don’t understand it. When mine woke at 5 I got under a blanket on the couch and had a cup of tea, stuck the Yoto player on and let them potter about the living room. We rode out the 5 am starts and then we started using the Yoto clock to teach that we stay in our bedroom until the sun comes up. It took a lot of work and perseverance but that’s what he does now aged 4. If he wakes up before the time we set on the clock, he listens to Yoto stories or switches on his lamp to look at his book, or plays with the toys in his room. He might go to the toilet but he goes straight back to his room and doesn’t wake us up. I always saw that period of time as short term pain for long term gain. We still don’t have an iPad.

I don’t judge, I just struggle to understand it because I can’t imagine giving a young child such a stimulating device at 5am that’s only going to snowball as they get older. I knew a woman who used to wonder why her child continued to get up at 5am at the age of 3 and 4 like clockwork. She didn’t grasp that by handing her the iPad at 5am she was training her brain to wake at that time wanting it.

Switch to tv instead of tablet. Mine don’t have any time on tablets/phones. They can watch tv, but it’s different than a small screen and often it’s on in the background while they do something else.

Lego is great and mine does a lot of Lego.

And getting outside. One hour at the playground on the way home from school or a walk with the baby in the pushchair is 1 hour less on a screen. I have to take my older one to sports training 3 days a week and there is a playground near, so we just stay there until it’s dark. The weather isn’t great every day, but it’s okay enough a few days a week. On the weekends, lots more time outside. We go to the beach (1 hour drive) even in the winter, trucks, tractors, action men, whatever are great in the sand. Or just a walk anywhere. Yesterday we did 5 miles around a local woodland and stopped at the pub for a coffee/juice and some snacks. Anytime outside is better than no time.

I never controlled how much tech my son had access to as he’s an only child and got pretty lonely otherwise, as we’re rural with no friends living within walking distance. The games he played when younger really brought on his reading and maths abilities and he was always ahead in primary school.

He never enjoyed games like Fortnight and was only interested in things like Minecraft and Roblox when younger. He got into coding when he was about 8yrs old and enjoyed that. Having decent tech equipment really helped him during the Covid lockdowns.

As a teen, he’s got into music and plays his and his dad’s guitars all the time. He rarely plays games on his devices now but uses the tech equipment to make and record music.

So we did a bit of both really - we did train the kids over time to stay in their rooms until 6 with their yoto players, that has worked well. Gro clock worked well for us combined with yoto.

But we didn't have kids who did well with "pottering around the living room" while we sat on the sofa, they were much keener on attention than that. We also needed them safely occupied while we showered and got ready for work and the tablet really helped with that. Our kids are energetic and into everything and for a while it just wasn't doable to leave them to play on their own as it wasn't safe.

We got into some bad habits there which we are gradually rowing back but we did the best we could at the time.

These days, our kids get a short amount of tablets time in the morning, like 15-20 mins or so and then they read until we leave for school.

It’s hard to navigate for sure. The 5am wake ups were my personal hell out of all the difficult moments in parenting. Pottering didn’t come naturally to my child either. That was also a concerted effort to train him. Sort of like a pomodoro approach (I think that’s the term) where when he was little we used a timer for short bursts of independent play which gradually increased. Now he plays for an hour or more at a time by himself. We all do what we need to do to get through for sure but I think sticking with no tablets from the start is the better option if parents can because then there’s nothing to row back on. And some kids do not take well to the tablets being removed and all hell breaks loose. I’d say for most children if you get them on a tablet young, you’re already rewiring their brains to that dopamine hit. More power to you for keeping it in check. It’s clearly a mammoth task for many judging by posts on this site.

I'm sure you're right and I could have done better but there we are! Sadly am not a perfect parent

Yeah I do see it's hard. Just sharing a few things that have worked for us:

Getting out into the garden in the morning - not every day by any means but my sons love this when the weather cooperates, football/badminton/table tennis, the baby might like to sit in the buggy and watch

Comics - my sons absolutely adore the Beano and other comics and they read them over breakfast

Setting up toys more attractively - e.g. getting Lego out in a big tray or setting some kind of challenge (make a marble run or something)

My kids just don't seem able to draw without a prompt but they do well with "how to draw" books

We do have them booked into after school club which I think is better for them than coming home after school every day or we would sink into more tablet time

My 12 year old gets max 1hr tablet time M-Th, then 2hrs per day F-Su. Parent controls are set up so it shuts off automatically so there is no negotiation (‘I just need one more minute’ would regularly turn in to a lot more and we got fed up of the arguments). He enjoys reading, drawing and playing with his yo-yo in addition to extra-curricular sport after school and a chess club. We have found we need to ignore the ‘I’m bored!!!!’ and eventually he finds something to occupy himself.