7 year old can't cope with any screen time.

[flowersintheshade]

I have a just turned 7 year old who seems to go berserk with any access to tv or tablets. She can be the loveliest child but if she has even 30 mins a day it seems to bring out the absolute worst in her and causes hysterical sobbing and sometimes violent rages when it's turned off, full on emotional meltdowns. Things like Netflix/YouTube kids seem to be the worst. Does anyone else have a child whose behaviour is so impacted by screen time?

Mine aren’t great on it. Make sure you get her back in the room before turning it off. So start a conversation with her aboit what’s happening in the show she’s watching so she has to engage with you, then ask her to turn it off. Avoids the sudden dopamine slump which causes the tantrum

YouTube kids is the actual devil. Mine have been banned from it mainly because they end up mindlessly scrolling and clicking on random things. I also don't trust the safety settings on it and have seen things on there that I don't think are appropriate for kids. I find anything that encourages them to mindlessly scroll ends in meltdowns. They just have some games on their tablets now and a time limit on it that switches it off when they hit it. Nothing they can watch as that's what the TV is for and we'll watch that together.

I have an idea: Set the screen to black and white, this reduces the crazy amount of dopamine given by bright super over-saturated YouTube videos, You can search up how to do this for their tablet.

One of mine has only just grown out of being like this. What worked:
-5 minute and 2 minute warning til it got switched off.
-Reducing total amount of TV time.
-Watching 'normal' TV where the programme changes rather than loads of the same programme on iPlayer.
For what it's worth, I had other children who didn't give a toss about TV. The only difference was that that when babies, their childminder had TV on whenever, and the TV obsessed one had a childminder who never had TV on!

Yes, we’ve actually a very mixed house in relation to screens, 10 yo can take it or leave it, 8 yo gets ott hyper, 15yo is addicted in the true sense of the word, non stop on it, his eyes go red and sore, he’s cranky and tired so we now do everything we can to take his attention off, getting him to help with stuff, going out for walks, board games, tv. We pay him to do chores and bribe him to read books (yes I do know!!) We were saying in the future screen time will be like smoking- they’ll be shocked at how we’ve messed ourselves up with it. If it helps I went to a few talks at the school and two said at 10 and under children cannot handle the rays from iPads or phones