8 year old dd will not get off iPad.

[Smondayblues]

Hi

My dd is 8 and since lockdown she has became 'addicted' to her iPad. She will go on it after school until I take it and hide it. She will then moan that she is bored and has nothing to do.

I let her on it after school to do her homework set by the teacher which is now all online. As I don't have time to watch over her for an hour she ends up playing games and watching YouTube. Then she will have to to the homework also.

This weekend she has repeatedly moaned she is bored as I have said no iPad other than for homework. She has really acted up banging doors and being rude to me and dp.
She has been really hard work and the weekend feels ruined.

Can I ask what activities you do with your 8 year old?
I am limited to what I can do outside but we do aim for at least one walk a day.

IME if you let her have 2 hours of screen time when she gets in she will find it very difficult to self occupy when it is turned off.
My children have no screen time on school days. During lockdown my DC were having too much and my DS was getting very addicted to a particular game. We said we had to take a break from it. He cried once then just got in with it. It’s only a computer game and it is the best thing for her brain development to ditch it. Be the parent and just say no.

Two hours is one hell of a lot. How many hours are there between getting home from school and her bedtime?

Why I chose two hours is because homework usually takes up an hour and then I thought an hour to play her game. I will trial that and see how it goes.

She gets home at 3:30 and asleep usually by 8:30.

You can set "downtime" on her iPad where it won't open the apps. You can set it to always allow certain apps, so she can always do her homework, but she can't access anything else.

I think games like this are the problem.

The games aren't a problem. The lack of parenting is.

@ScarMatty

I think games like this are the problem.

The games aren't a problem. The lack of parenting is.

To be fair these are the sort of replies I was expecting.

@whatsagoodusername

You can set "downtime" on her iPad where it won't open the apps. You can set it to always allow certain apps, so she can always do her homework, but she can't access anything else.

Thank you I will do that.

What do you do with her? To expect a young child to entertain themselves in an unstructured way for most of the time is quite a big ask.
What exercise is she getting? Do you involve her in household activities like cooking and cleaning? Do you read together or play together? Does she go from iPad to television? Does she have a hobby or have friends to play?

You need to separate the homework ipad time and the leisure ipad time. They don't need to be intertwined like this.

You wouldn't do any other activity for two hours on a school day, unless it's an out of the house organised one. You wouldn't say go and do some craft for two hours or do a puzzle for two hours or tidy your room for two hours or have a bath and wash your hair for two hours. You wouldn't put her to bed at 6pm so she could have two hours reading time before bed.

2 hours is quite a lot. Does she have 1 hour of homework a day that needs doing?

Agree with separating the homework iPad time and the playing time.

DD would also play all the time if she could. Now she's back at school there's no gaming during the week, and no telly in the mornings either, both are just for weekends. We explained how it affected her behaviour, and during calmer moments she could see that. At the moment it's not something she's going to "win" back - lockdown was a mad time, now these are the new rules.

I know it's hard to put up with the whinging etc but I'd stop the iPad entirely during the week.

I think if we are honest lots of us have been giving more screen time than we like this year. Mine were so bored and unhappy during lockdown I definitely let it slide. My friends have all said the same.

For us it's naturally got better since schools went back, and I feel sick at the thought of having to go back to lockdown

Maybe the best way to do something with it find something more interesting and set the rules. But don't even try to swear, the child will only get angrier. We had the same problem until my child found a hobby. Online education does not simplify the situation, we are staying home, after 4 lessons there is nothing to do except the Ipad.
That's why we started our morning and day routine like sport, reading a book, cooking, cleaning, playing board games. Even if the child grabs Ipad, we are watching it together not more than 2 hours per day.
Good luck to you!

8 year olds should be drawing, painting, colouring, reading, doing jigsaws or Lego. The Works sells lots of cheap craft kits for making bracelets etc. Teach her to sew? Can she help with making the supper?

@ScarMatty

I think games like this are the problem.

The games aren't a problem. The lack of parenting is.

It’s a bit of both. As I mentioned up thread it’s so difficult especially if school require you to use the iPad and also if most of the class are talking about a certain game and recreating it at lunch time and play times. Not knowing what 90% of the class are talking about can feel excluding. There are many many factors going in to why the screen thing is difficult for many parents and ‘lack of parenting’ over simplifies it.

My 8 year old DD is the same, since lockdown when she was put in iPad so I could work in peace.

Not her fault, but the habit is proving hard to break. She is very strong willed too, which doesn't help.

There's some good tips here though - thanks!

@Time2change2

I totally understand it's tricky when a majority of school homework is now online which makes it very very tempting when children associate the iPad the games and then have to do 'real' work.

But saying that a child is left alone for a hour to do homework is ridiculous. A majority of 8 year olds will not hold attention for that along so of course they will get distracted. They need to be kept on task.

It's pure laziness to say that you "can't" get it off them. Of course you can, you just don't want the battle afterwards.

@mdh2020

8 year olds should be drawing, painting, colouring, reading, doing jigsaws or Lego. The Works sells lots of cheap craft kits for making bracelets etc. Teach her to sew? Can she help with making the supper?

My 6 year old absolutely loves these things but my 21 month old tries to wreck it all. We live in a small two bed and I can't stop him everytime. Unfortunately she's realised she can do all these activities virtually and it's easy and quick to move a tablet away compared to packing up lots of little pieces.

We only have the tablet to complete all the online homework so I understand the need for it but on set days, once the homework is done the tablet goes away. I agree that you need to reset the expectations around the iPad.

You’ve had lots of good advice on screen time.

But I’d add some on what you let her play. Some games are more addictive than others. My DC have restrictions on their tablets so they can’t download anything from the App Store without my permission, and anything that they’re too young for is greyed out. So my 9yo asked for a game, and I said I’d research it and see, but it turned out its a 12 so she can’t have it anyway. She said her friends have it, I said different families have different rules. The younger rated games are less addictive, and all round safer.

You may not want to be as strict as that, but I do think it’s worth googling GameName parental restrictions before letting any DC download and play a game, so you know how (or if it’s possible) to set it up safely.

That’s why my DC don’t have TikTok- I googled and realised there’s no way to control what they are shown, even with the new improved parental controls.

Other things my DC of a similar age do are trampoline, "pretending" games, board games (with us, not each other, frustratingly), baking, reading and writing stories. DD engages with this more; DS is more of a telly addict but he does dance lessons and plays outdoors a fair bit too. They get screen time when they've done a job to help out.

You're going to have to work out how to supervise and set limits. Take some responsibility.

The thing that jumped out at me was that you 'don't have time' to supervise her homework. Make time. Sit and do it together a few times so you know how much support she needs and how long he work should realistically take - 45 minutes per day seems a lot for an 8 year old which suggests she is mostly playing games in that time. Then from that point sit her at the kitchen table while you make dinner - or next to you as you work on your laptop or whatever it is you're doing - and check in on her progress every now and then. We have banned gaming during the week and allow time each weekend, everyone is much calmer and happier as a result.

I think a good way forward would be helping her to find something else to do. My 9yo loves lego which is similar to some computer games in that you can really get stuck in and it passes the time really well. Maybe getting involved in a project together might help, building a lego set or doing puzzles together for part of the day. With my two older children we also really loved reading the Harry Potter series, we all start them at the same time then chat about what we thought about them. It was really good because they were reading on their own and occupying themselves but later we would chat about it so they felt a bit more connected than just reading alone.

Take the ipad off her, set up restrictions so only certain websites/apps can be used and give it her back, tell her she can have them removed after she's done all her homework and read for 30 mins.

I am old enough to remember the days before online games or even the days before the internet. 8-year olds complaining that they were bored was hardly something unheard of.

The good old stock answers still work: "Only boring people get bored" and "Oh I'm so glad you've got time on your hand, I was just looking for someone to help me with x/y/z".

Yesterday when she got back from school she did her homework straight away. She had completed it within 30 minutes and I checked it over and she had done it completely. She skipped the TT rockstars as that is not compulsory. Some of her homework involved multiplication anyway.

iPad then went away and she played with her younger brother until dinner time. After dinner she designed a front cover of a magazine and she is going to design a few pages every day after school ( on paper, not on pc ) this was her own idea after I told her no iPad.

She then helped me bath youngest ds and gathered me all his clothes and nappy etc.

Bath then bed where she read for 30 minutes.

I'm surprised how well she took it really. I think she already had the magazine idea planned so she wasn't complaining of boredom.

She does have lots of crafty stuff and LEGO but eldest ds who is almost 3 likes to get involved and it often ends badly as he's too young for small LEGO and tends to ruin her crafts by mixing all the paint colors etc.

I can't always sit with her for hours either as I have two other children who also need my time. I will need to think of activities we can all do together.