Why do I even bother.. kids!

[SouthMumof2]

Fed up dragging the kids off their iPads .. it’s like they are glued to them and I honestly think would sit on them from the minute they got up til they went to sleep. All half term been getting moans and groans from then (10,12) when taking them to some decent activities that I would be over the moon with as a child. Today’s final straw was I’d booked swimming, mainly to get them exercise as well.. heard 12 year old say to her online friend‘I’ve got to go my mum is making me get off’ so ungrateful (£21) for 3 of us to swim and it’s got flumes ect so not just a pool. Both have come home and gone straight back on iPads. I wonder why I even bother now. Any other parents experiencing the same thing?

Think of it like this.

Its the equivalent of giving your children access to a large cupboard of sweets.
Your neighbours kids barely touch their cupboard and are fine.
Your sisters kids are always eating from the cupboard and get a bit moany when the cupboard closes, but are otherwise fine.
Your friends child has 2 hours a day access to the cupboard but always gets headaches and a stomach ache.
Your other friends kids can only have sweet cupboard access once a week for a couple of hours max, because otherwise they get upset tummies and mood swings from the sugar highs and crashes.

All kids are different and need different things, and what happens outside of 'cupboard time' matters just as much as whats happening at 'cupboard time'.

If your kids are displaying signs of headaches (not interested in anything other than the ipad) or tummy ache (unable to occupy themselves without the ipad) then you take the sweet cupboard access away or at least right back until you find a way that they can still have the occasional treat without an adverse affect on the rest of their life.

It will be hell for a few weeks while they wean off the sugar withdrawals, but they need to learn to find something healthy to fill the gap, and you need to help them to do that (and that can be 'lets do this' or 'why dont you go do this' or 'you've got plenty of books/art materials, go figure it out')

Hello i had a similar situation with my younger 2 kids age 5&7. My eldest is autistic so uses his tablet for different things and it regulates him listening to music. We stupidly did allow iPads for our younger 2 as we felt bad not allowing them the same as their brother but it was evident they were using them for completely different things and my 7 year old became completely addicted to a popular gaming platform. The final straw came when i’d booked a fun day out to a theatre show for my younger 2 with an activity before and just got complaints about how bored they were and didnt want to do the activity and when could they go home to play on their iPads so my husband and I took the tablets away. It’s been a few months now and honestly it’s been life changing. The first few weeks we had tears and tantrums but now they’ve started playing again for example building wooden train tracks together, colouring in , crafts, science and don’t get bored by everything anymore. We now allow limited time on the switch playing team games together and that’s helped as they are playing together having a laugh talking and actually having fun rather than sat with headphones on not communicating.
we watched the documentary by Emma and Matt Willis about banning phones also in schools and it really resonated about how addictive electronics can be so that’s worth a watch if you didn’t see it already. X