If not screens what?

[Liveonmars]

10 year old DS is obsessed with YouTube. It used to be on TV and since getting a phone it’s watching it on that. We’ve set a screen time limit of 2.5 hours a day at weekend on YouTube. Thing is he’s at a complete loss of what to do when he’s not on YouTube.

I’ll take him to the park, kick a football about with him, take him on days out etc, but on those days when I’ve got things at home to get on with I can’t entertain!

what do your preteens do indoors when they are not on screens? He struggles around fine motor skills so doesn’t do lego or art / colouring and doesn't read unless we are sitting alongside him and he perceives it as a chore.

what do your children do at home to entertain themselves? It was so much easier when he pushed toy cars around the carpet!

My 9 year old reads, draws, plays with her toys (slyvanian families), writes stories.
She’s never been allowed on tik tok/YouTube so that’s helped. I also let her get bored. She also plays with her 7 and 4 year old siblings

I'd work on his reading with him.

Invite a friend over.

Other than that leave him be, let him use his imagination/creativity/problem solving skills to solve the problem of boredom himself.

What's he watching for 2.5 hours on YouTube? Something he could do himself/could inspire a hobby?

My boys are the same but they’re 14 not 10. I have the same problem so I’m partly empathising and partly place holding for the replies!

If I’m not there to get them off their phones/PS, they would do this all day. If I’m out/ill/tired, this is all they do.

I’m a single mum so it’s bloody draining to know I’m the flood gate stopping this behaviour.

PS in answer to your question though, if I’m on it I can encourage them to:

help me in the house (dishwasher/laundry usually)

read a bit

play a bit of footie together

play a board/card game with me

come out to a cafe with me

As I said though, if I can’t police their screen use, they will be on them for the majority of the day.

2.5 hours a day every day is way too much. Mine get that at the weekend buy not consistently. I definitely don't let my nearly 9yo and 12yo have 2.5 hrs in the week of screen time.

They both still get bored without screen and then fight or play rough which is irritating when we have toys and creative stuff they could play with. They will settle down to play a game or read a book but only after bouncing balls around the house or firingnerf guns at each other and making each other scream.

The main thing they do when not on screens is they love comics so that keeps them quiet. We get the beano and the phoenix but also have bag full of old beanos and dandies that a friend donated that keep them quiet for ages.

DS1 is 10. A couple of hours of cartoons in the morning (or MythBusters, which he adores). Homework and music practice. Reads (have you tried fact books with short segments like ‘What If?’ by Randall Munroe?), argues with DS2, plays board games, if the weather is faintly good enough is outside with tennis ball and cricket bat. I try to insist on some form of exercise to stop him bouncing off the walls…today we went for a 90 minute walk (bribed with a drink at a cafe).

Yoto mini so they can listen to radio, podcasts, music and audiobooks?

I devoured books at that age. Perhaps try graphic novels or something a bit different to see if they like those.

Does your DC like any sports or play an instrument?

Absolutely re feeling like the floodgate to stop the behaviour! This is absolutely how I feel.

Reading other posters replies so far has just highlighted the differencees between my DS and many others of that age. I really envy posters saying their children write / read a book. I remember reading book after book at his age and not wanting to put a book down til the end. We work on reading daily and have since year one. DS has significant delay in reading and writing so this isn’t something he can do independently regardless of format (believe me we’ve tried comics, graphic novels etc - I have to be alongside him for him to read). Audiobooks might be something he’ll try.

He lloves football so he goes to training / plays at the park will kick about in the garden but - those times when we are in the house and I’m not available are exhausting if he’s off screens. I’d have agreed with other posters that 2.5 hours is too much before I had children!

it doesn’t help that he doesn’t have siblings. We do encourage / setup play dates but for a child without siblings this still means for the majority of time he not socialising.

I feel guilty about his YouTube watching and do feel like I’m failing when it’s entertaining him. However I have only got so many hours a day to engage him and he does try hard at school despite his struggles academically so he needs some downtime that he enjoys.

I have a 10yo he watches YouTube for art/drawing videos. I made the very expensive outlay of a set of POSCA marker pens and thats all he's done all day and evening.

Other than that he will play with the cat, I give him chores to do if he complains of boredom, or he is also obsessed with the rubix cube, this also sometimes requires tutorials from YouTube. He can now solve it in under a minute
.

I think you need to find him an interest, a lot of those things are driven by online watching but as long as he is actually creating or doing something I don't mind.

Should also add my son is an only child, so no playing with siblings when I have things to do.

We had a long trip which meant two weeks out of school earlier in the year, the deal was no catch up work If he wrote a journal, he complained but then loved it!

He's also living Percy Jackson books and in the evening I might send him to bed a bit earlier to listen to it on audio

2.5 hours is too much, I’d give him an hour, maybe let him play Minecraft or similar with his friends at weekends for another hour?

Do you have a garden? Does he have roller skates or a basket ball hoop or anything like that?

Does he have hobbies or attend clubs?

YouTube is awful drivel. What about more constructive screen time?.get him designing and coding his own game?

What about making little animations from Lego characters?

Exercise games on the switch?

Cooking?

More physical art that isn't so intricate, like marbelling or dyeing fabrics, screen printing.

Music is fabulous, what about getting him some lessons on an instrument?

Science kits? You can get them sent monthly by MEL Science and there is another subscription one that looks good. Although I guess you’d have to do those with him.

At 10, at home?

Practising piano. A lot of reading, alone or with us, for fun. Making little films using our phones. (Child didn’t have their own until senior school.) Listening to the radio, mostly with us - the news, plays, opera, current affairs discussions, classical music, etc, etc - we made sure they understood it was as / more important than TV. Watching a zillion films, mostly with us. Writing stories and scripts. ‘Helping’ in the garden. Singing and dancing with endless music videos. Bits of baking / pizza making with us. Having friends over to play. Quite a bit of time staying in contact with grandparents and other relatives via FaceTime.

Fortunately at 10 child was preparing for entrance exams so, in addition to usually boring school homework, we provided quite a lot of ‘academic extension’ work, which they were (surprisingly) willing to do because they very much wanted to get into the chosen school.

(Also a corresponding range of activities outside the house - swimming, cycling, football, cricket, etc. Lots of trips to galleries, museums, theatre, concerts, workshops, matches, cinema, birthday parties, seeing family, friends, godparents, staying with grandparents …)

I remember their being 10 as a particularly engaged and exciting year where they made huge strides in maturity and discovered just what they could achieve if they set their mind to it, academically and in terms of shaping family life. It was a year full of exploration - with a willing child.

12 was a different matter …

Don't beat yourself up OP.

At 9 dd was reading, writing stories, playing with Lego and didn't show much interest in the X box (lockdown purchase), had never asked to play Roblox and only watched tv after 6pm (and never TikTok or Youtube).
I felt smug.

At 10, dd is now post puberty - writing stories is lame, Lego is childish. Roblox is the best thing ever. Youtube is all she wants to watch. (She still reads though.)
I am no longer smug.

We have to compromise - screen time in return for doing after school sports clubs, keeping up with swim club training, doing homework properly etc.
No screens after 8pmish.
I can't force her to like arts and crafts and boardgames. She's no longer a young child. Either mentally or physically.

One thing she likes to do is play with her friends online - she's not quite old enough to walk to her friends houses alone yet and doesn't have a phone so it's a way for them to socialise sometimes when we can't arrange physical get togethers.