To think some children are just wired to need / want screen time

[Gagamama2]

All my children’s childhood we have limited screen time. They are generally not allowed any on school weekdays (my partner put this in place years ago and gets angry if I relent). They are allowed it on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and holiday mornings, although partner is always unhappy about this and would like to restrict furthur.

Kids are 10, 8 and 6.

It often causes a lot of grief / anger / upset for 10 and 6 who are both boys undergoing assessment for adhd. They often get upset after school that they aren’t allowed any, and when they are allowed they find it hard to come off. This means they regularly have much too much screen time at the weekend as the fall out of them having to come off the screens is big.

My daughter who is 8 is different. She will happily choose other things to do, even if it is a screen time “time”. What prompted my post is that she has spent this morning reading a graphic novel about dragons, and is now singing along at top volume to the greatest showman soundtrack on Alexa, all of her own accord while her brothers are on screens. She just isn’t that bothered. I was the same compared to my brother who spent most of his childhood playing on either our Amiga or his best friends Amiga 😂.

my brother is now a functional adult - much more functional than me, in fact. He has a very good job, although I do look at him sometimes and wonder if he is ND. My point is the screen time didn’t hold him back.

are we unreasonable limiting children’s screen times (as long as it’s not impacting on school work and friendships etc)? Maybe it’s not actually helpful for some children

You have to ask, "what's in it for the child?"

For a young child, absolutely nothing. Plonking a child in front of a screen, including having a weird holder contraption to keep it right in front of their faces, is all for the parent.

It's to enable the parent to do what they want, including being on their own screens endlessly.

And to think that yesteryear's parents were tutted at for using a playpen.

It is definitely a learned behaviour. My DC are middle aged adults. They didn’t sit around as children asking for me to invent screens. They played with toys and games. Whenever they could, they were out in the garden. And they read a lot.

There was a doctor on the news today talking about how cases of ADHD have skyrocketed and he sees people with a diagnosis that never would've been diagnosed as having ADHD under the NHS. I thought that was interesting, not that I was surprised. The disruptive kids have learnt if they keep having meltdowns they get their screens. Wonder if there's some correlation there!

Really? What sort of doctor?

@Mistletoeiggi some sort of specialist in ADHD. Didn't catch all of it. I'm sure plenty of people won't like what he had to say about overdiagnosis.

Sounds very vague. I have a dc who has been through both a private and an nhs diagnosis, and I know which one was more thorough (not the nhs one). Same conclusions though.

@Mistletoeiggi well of course the private would be more thorough-you're paying for it! NHS obviously got it right as well though-I expect they just have much stricter criteria.

I don't think that at all. How could a less thorough assessment have stricter criteria? The criteria are the criteria. Private clinics (not the one we used anyway) don't make this stuff up at random.
The difference is you don't get seen on the NHS. Over 3 years in our case.