How do you limit evening screen time with a 10-year-old?

[Livefreely]

Parents of those with older primary kids who don’t go to bed til 9pm ish- do you manage to keep them off the tele and doing other activities the majority of the evening?

I have a 10 year old DD who gets into bed around 9pm. It feels like such hard work between when we get home from school and bedtime which is around 5 hours not to resort to too much screen!

any tips or advice?

We went to the park a lot, socialised a lot and did some good activities at this age. He was also learning an instrument—and hating it—

The single most effective thing was to get him to cook the evening meal with us - a job we had to do anyway. Far from every night though. can’t win them all.

Yes we do a lot of after school sports etc (yesterday was football and then watching brother do martial arts) and then dinner takes us up to 6:30:7. Then they play ping pong or football in the garden, bath. I insist on at 8pm bedtime with half hour of reading. Sometimes they read till 9, most of the time it’s 8:30. I agree with getting them to cook dinner/upload dishwasher on different nights.

Tbh it sounds as if you’re doing pretty well. Finding the occasional thing you watch together?

Thank you @PermanentTemporary and @QueenofFox
definiteky now we are in spring we will go to the park more.
I love cooking and have tried to get her into it- it’s a good idea, I will try again!

If he has an iPad you can control screen time by being the parent on it and can connect it to your phone you can set which apps he can use til what time and on what days.

When I say he cooked dinner with us - usually it would only be a key part. Like I got him to chop and cook the onion and garlic, or to make the burger patties. Light touch.

We have quite a few after school activities so that takes some of the time some of the days. Aside from that though, my ten year old enjoys playing. She loves to build, so Lego, train tracks, magnatiles, and dens are all out regularly. She's also often out playing on the street with friends. Screen time doesn't come into it much.

Mine is playing at the park, in the garden and on his guitar instead. He gets 1 hour screen and then has to fill his time with something else

Keep them busy with other things. Mine is a bit older, but has sports 4:30-9pm 3 nights a week. Have friends over and they play outside. Scouts was 7-8:30pm once a week. We go out and do various things, the food shopping, a dog walk, run errands, etc.

When they aren’t doing all these things, I don’t actually care if they watch tv. No phones or gaming, as my 10 year old didn’t have a phone anyway. But tv is fine as long as it’s not all they do.

Making packed lunch for tomorrow can take up a good half hour of faffing 😁

I sometimes feel similar OP - generally my kids aren't massive screen users (no phones and limited time on Switch/YouTube) but I find at this time of year, now the evenings are lighter, it's a bit weird realising you've got all this time with them in the evenings and getting used to that!

We often divide and conquer - I take one of them on a shortish walk or cycle ride , nothing major but just enough to get out of the house and have a good chat. Sometimes good to have an aim for this, i.e. shall we go and explore that bit of town we don't know/go and drop this off at X's house etc.

As others have said, I involve them in cooking and we do quite a bit of baking. Great if they have their own recipe book and can choose stuff.

We also play a lot of board games and I have a jigsaw out pretty much permanently in the living room - if I ask them to do it they say no, but if I sit down and start doing it, often they drift over to help 😂

We do watch telly together as a family though - classic 80s adventure films, stand-up comedy etc, the occasional documentary. I'm fine with that.

Age 10yo is peak club age isn’t it? My dd had clubs every evening at that age.

9pm is a late bedtime, my dd was in bed at 8pm and could read for half an hour or so.

I let them, but with a clear boundary. For example, the last half hour before teatime, if they are tired and everything else has been done, but on the understanding that when I call them to eat it gets turned off with no complaints. If they whine when it's time to turn it off, it doesn't go on the next time.

@Girliefriendlikespuppies we habe one after school club and brownies on the same night. Tutor after school another night and gymnastics on Saturday. I don’t want to fill her life with clubs for the sake of it and they cost a lot of money.
I will def try and make bedtime earlier good shout!

Also I think it’s definitely a spring/summer thing, I don’t feel like this in depths of winter. We live in the countryside so no way would I want to driving most nights to various clubs everywhere but in the summer I feel I want to get out more.

Thank you all for the suggestions I think she forgets all the stuff she has available to play with so maybe I need to bring some stuff out and remind her!!

My youngest is 11 but I find having to share screens gives them a natural time limit because it's someone else's turn.

We just say no telly Monday to Friday. We do bedtime earlier, go up around 7pm and spend time reading.

Lots of extra curriculars, encouraging outdoor play with friends, violin practice, letting him read in the bath (surprising win that one) and board games.

Also homework needs doing the day it comes home.

We do unlimited tv plus up to an hour of gaming until dinner time at about 6. In reality he has after school care 2 days, swimming and a music lesson which means some days he’s not got much time before dinner anyway.

After dinner in winter he plays with toys, draws, reads. After dinner in spring and summer he’s straight out to play with all the other kids on our street. Bedtime naturally becomes later in the summer because they are having too much fun. In the colder months I organise after school play dates if I think he's needing off the screens.

Make her bed time earlier.
In bed reading or quiet play in her bedroom at 7:30 pm for lights out at 8:00 pm.

Your DD could complete her chores and home work, play, cook, talk to her parents, walk or ride around the block with you etc. Limiting screens during the school week is not hard.

We've had a rule / understanding always that there's no computer or phone after dinner, he's either out at hobbies or watching telly, playing board games, chatting, out for a walk, etc with us.

We have no screens during the week. Time is filled with clubs, dinner and then shower and then artwork or reading.

We tell ours when the screens go off, and they go off. That bit is relatively easy.

The hard part is the kid being able, by themself, to come up with alternative things to do, which is much, much easier if they already have hobbies and interests. We live in a walkable town and my tween has local activities 4 nights a week, is a keen reader, is learning an instrument, still plays with toys, has a sibling to interact with, and occasionally with hatch a plan to do something grand and pursue it for a few days until it all becomes hard / boring (e.g. the current example is writing a book about a group of ninja penguins marooned (not sure how... presumably they could swim away whenever they wanted) on a tropical island.

Does your child have chores? If you have the means to offer this, might they be interested in doing more chores for more pocket money?

I agree with most of the above, but think it's important to think about why you are wanting to limit screens so much as well.

If they've been out during the day, at school/ had a load of fresh air/ been socialising and active etc, then in my opinion, at 10 years old, there is nothing wrong with 30-60 mins of downtime watching something or playing a video game in the evening if that's how they want to relax.

Some people really demonise it, but my view is that it's all about how it's structured and balanced with other things.

There are lots of good things you can do on screens - playing games socially, learning/ experiencing things you otherwise wouldn't in your day to day life, and there's actually quite a lot of scope for creativity and imagination to be sparked. Screens are not objectively bad. It all depends on what you are doing/ watching of course. You have to actively monitor it and make sure it's not mindless junk.

We as adults also have screen time, and at 10 it's fine to start doing that in a controlled way - it's actually a part of adult life for most people, and like anything, the more you limit it the more they are going to want it.

You don't want them to reach 16/18 and suddenly have unlimited access with no ability to regulate. Introduce/ allow it slowly and intentionally.

We had the exact same gap—home at 4, bed at 9, five hours of "what now?"

What didn't work: banning screens entirely. Created a battle every night. I was exhausted, she was resentful, nobody won.

What worked: we use AirDroid to set a hard cutoff at 7pm. Not my rule—"our rule." We agreed on it together, and the app just enforces it so I'm not the villain. 7pm hits, her tablet locks. No negotiation, no "five more minutes."

Before 7pm, she has free screen time. After 7pm, it's "protected time." Board games, cooking, audio books, Lego, whatever. Honestly sometimes she just lies on the floor complaining for 20 minutes. That's fine. The boredom passes.

The trick was having the cutoff be automatic. When I was the one saying "turn it off," it was personal. When the device just locks, it's physics. She can be mad at the device. I'm just there with snacks.

Also: we started the 7pm rule on a Friday, not a school night. Less pressure, easier to stick.