Screen Time Rules that Work
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Here’s a question that can strike fear in every working mom’s heart: How are you doing at limiting screen time? Do you have strict limits that are in place, perhaps with specific tools like iPhone’s new screen time limits or the kinds of limits you can impose via WiFi routers? How do you “share” screen time with different caregivers — i.e., if Grandma watches your child after school, does she “get” an hour to bestow on the child? What are the screen time rules that work for your family?
For my $.02, we stink at screen time limits for both kids. My youngest really likes iPad games but otherwise prefers YouTube videos to television and movies…while my eldest loves it ALL: Netflix, YouTube, Minecraft, iPad games, etc. iPad is easy enough to limit with iPhone’s screen time limits, but because he “gets” his screen time from so many different physical options (TV via Fire Stick, computer, iPad, iPhone, etc. — and different geographical locations, so a WiFi router won’t help that!), it’s harder to limit.
Plus, if he’s up early, my husband (also an early riser) is inclined to let him watch TV for two hours… which doesn’t always get conveyed to his after-school caregiver so that she can limit his Minecraft time.
(And this doesn’t even get into the new thing we’re doing where he can “earn” 15 more minutes of screen time if he reads a book for 15 minutes!) He’s doing really well in school, so it isn’t a huge concern, but I’m sure I’d be horrified at all those studies about how screen time is changing our kids’ brains for the worse… if I could really bring myself to care about this particular aspect of parenting.
(I did buy a Circle a while ago, but it was limiting my own screen time in unintentional ways, so I unplugged it until I “learned more…” and now I realize that was several years ago and I have yet to learn more. Whoops.)
How about you, ladies — what screen time rules work for your family? Are you the Screen Time Sheriff in your house? How do you limit screen time with your children, and how do you share screen time with other caregivers?
Photo via our personal family collection — all rights reserved.
Further reading:
- How to Set Screen Rules That Stick [Common Sense Media]
- Parents Share The Screen Time Rules That Actually Work For Them [Huffington Post]
- Forget Screen Time Rules — Lean In To Parenting Your Wired Child, Author Says [NPR]
- 8 Rules for Family Screen Time [Parenting]
- Why We Need to Embrace the Joy of Screen Time with Our Kids [Working Mother]
- (Note that if you have a mesh network like Google WiFi or Orbi then the network may also have screen time options…)
Until it becomes a behavior problem (and it hasn’t so far), we don’t limit time. We do limit programs to be age appropriate (relatively speaking – Jeopardy is theoretically not appropriate for toddlers, but my toddler LOVES that show). So far it hasn’t, and screen time is only exciting for so long before my kids get bored and find something else to do.
We just do 30 mins a day for our 2yr old, period. She does not do any tablet or phone games ever. We use screen time if she’s getting tired in the late afternoon and she wants to chill. We don’t use screens in public (grocery store, restaurant, etc) to entertain her because I think she needs to learn how to be a human and interact or observe. If things get hairy at a restaurant then we leave. We don’t enforce any limits on plane rides, car trips, or when she’s sick. But she’ll usually only watch something for 45 mins at most anyways.
I’ve got an under 2 and try to stick to the APA guidelines of no screentime beyond Skype/Facetime although I know these have been somewhat discredited. I will, however, play the garbage truck or London bus channel for hair trimming, nail cutting, etc and when we have to face that transatlantic flight, I’ll happily hand over the ipad. We have a bus commute and typically read books but sometimes we’ll look at photos of family on my phone if the traffic is bad and he’s getting squirrely.
We’ve had the BBC on in the evening because of ongoing Brexit drama and my kiddo largely ignores it, unless he sees a bus, police car, taxi, or a dog.
We end up with about 20 minutes a day for our 3yo (she watches a Daniel Tiger in the morning while I dress her and then get the bags packed up).
We didn’t start with that until she was a bit over two, but I have to admit her baby brother (now 13 months) gets more than she did at that age. It’s just tough not to — when we put on Daniel Tiger for the toddler, he naturally goes over to check out the TV. Hopefully it is not disintegrating his brain.
Neither kid gets any phone or tablet time (we don’t have a tablet). No games, no YouTube, etc. The few times we tried it with the 3yo it turned her into a monster so we decided on a hard no.
My daughter watches anywhere from 30-90 minutes of age appropriate youtube videos and daniel tiger and is 21 months. I think it’s amazing if you’re able to wait until 2, but she’s home all day with me (with 5 hours of childcare where I work PT), so I can’t get anything done at this age without it. I solo parent a lot when I’m home as husband works a lot.
We do give her our phone if she’s having a meltdown coming back from the park because she’s learned to wiggle out of her stroller. Husband and I also enjoy our walks, so not trying to cut that out. we give it to her in the car if it’s a 30+ minute car trip and she’s getting antsy. We never go out to eat with her because she’s incredibly high energy and cannot sit still. I give it to her in the morning some days for 15 minutes if my husband can’t watch her and she’s having a melt down, getting into things like turning on the bathtub water constantly, trying to climb onto the desk in our bedroom, climbing onto the bathroom counter etc. We’ve babyproofed everything we can, but some of these things are impossible.
I don’t know, it’s not great, but she’s ahead on all milestones and is reading, playing, interacting with us / doing other things for the 10+ hours a day she’s not on a screen, so I try to cut myself slack. I think parents should be kinder to themselves in general, modern day parenting imposes so much “solo” parenting that’s unlike previous generations where it really was a village and moms/dads didn’t work as much as they do now.
For our preschooler, we don’t do any screen time on the weekdays. We just don’t have time for it.* On the weekends she gets 1.5 hours total each day, split into morning and afternoon times. If we didn’t have limits she would watch several hours a day and then be very cranky. We started the weekend screen time when she dropped her afternoon nap and started waking up early, just to give ourselves a break. We don’t have any tablets in the house, so all the screen time is streaming shows or Sesame Street online games.
*We are fortunate enough to generally have both parents home during bedtime. On the rare occasions when I have do bedtime alone, I will give the older one my phone to play a very low key game for 15-20 minutes while I get the baby down.
For the baby, no screen time at all. He will definitely look at the TV if it’s on, so I take him in another room when the older child is watching it.
LO is still under 2, so screen time is new to us. I broke it out during a bout of stomach bug and then a few weeks later we had a flight, so he got “his” iPad (I had a super old iPad from like 2010 that I wiped clean and created an Apple kids account/Google kids account for him on and it essentially only has youtube kids and a couple apps, like bubble popping). He is still at the age where it is out of sight out of mind, so since we’ve been back from the trip and he’s been healthy he has had zero screen time.
As he gets older I like the 30min limit on weekdays and maybe 90min on the weekend. I’m really not committing to anything right now because I have no idea how it’ll go when hes older, we have another baby, etc. I like that I set up the iPad to be totally under my control – I can limit his screen time and require my permission before he does anything on it, like get a new app.
Nanny share does not use screen time at all – the three kiddos entertain each other. I suppose that’s another thing that could change when they get older and start dropping naps, but I figure he’ll be in preschool by then. Nanny is sometimes on the iPad herself, whatsapping her friends, and they don’t even acknowledge it – the three of them are so into playing/fighting over toys.
I’ll play! I have a 3.5 and a 1.5 year old. They’re home all day with my husband, my mom, or me. They get an episode or two of something like Daniel Tiger or Paw Patrol in the AM at breakfast, repeat at lunch, and again, repeat at dinner if I am solo-parenting (which is several nights a week). The nights when we’re all home, we eat in the dining room with no TV. Some evenings, they get half an episode of something while we do snacks right before bed, some nights it’s a full episode. They get no tablets and no phones.
I don’t love how much they get and the timing. On one hand, it feels like a lot, but it also works for us. Honestly, they eat better because if they stop taking bites, I pause the TV, and they take a bite. While I worry about setting them up for mindless binge eating, I don’t really think that’s the case. I grew up with the TV on all the time, and now I despise TV and am a healthy eater. I’m at the point where I don’t even feel it’s “missed” time to talk and things because we do plenty of that outside of meals. We play, we walk, we do baths, and we talk the whole time, partially because they are fed and content.
My 3.5 year old dropped naps and now the only way he’ll get any “rest” in the afternoon, when he desperately needs it, is the TV. So, there are plenty of days he gets more than the 2 hours. But he also gets bored eventually with the TV, runs around a lot, is very imaginative, and is overall a well-rounded 3.5 year old, so I’m good with it.
6 and 2 year old. We were pretty good with limited to no screen time with our oldest before 2 (we’d have it on a lot when she was really little, but never on kid shows and she really didn’t “watch”), but around 2 with her we started using it as a baby sitter in the morning while we were getting ready for work and then again in the evening for a wind-down after dinner. This continues to this day, but the youngest definitely started watching way before age 2 since kid shows were on and way more interesting then ESPN or something to her. All told, they get well less than 60 minutes a day on weekdays. Weekends are much harder. Our youngest still naps for at least 1.5 hours both days and we’ve gotten in the habit of letting our oldest watch a movie or play on the iPad during this entire time each day to keep her quiet. That, plus longer mornings, means our oldest is getting probably close to 3 hours a day on winter weekend days. UGH. I’m hoping this will improve this summer with more activities and more outdoor time, but honestly it’s hard to keep her quiet and still get done what I need to do during naptime, so it may just be a necessary evil for our family.
7 and 2. Speaking mostly about our 7 year old since the 2 year old doesn’t seem to care much yet…. Our kids’ screen time at home is pretty limited – our tv is in the basement and we don’t have a computer or other device in the common area, and while both my husband and and I have tablets and smartphones, the kids (well, the 7 year old) knows that these are mom and dad’s device and off limits to them. So they pretty much get no screen time on weekdays and weekend is limited to FaceTiming with grand parents and cousins and maybe watching a movie once or twice a month. And football on Sunday with daddy when it is football season. She does get to listen to audiobooks and podcasts, but even with those, we turn it on and put the device out of reach.
We found early on with our oldest that we had to be really tough with the screen time limits because she had huge tantrums when we tried to turn the screen off or when we told her she couldn’t have any screen time. And when she did have screen time, she could watch for hours- she’s not the type to get bored and do other things.
The other thing we are realizing is that she is inundated with screens wherever she goes in life – she gets a huge amount of screen time at school, there are screens whenever we go to restaurants, everyone else has screens so when she goes to a friends house more often than than not the play date becomes hiding out with her friend’s iPad. I feel like I can’t control the amount of screen time she gets when we are not at home, so I should be pretty strict when we are home.
Having said all that, I do periodically feel guilty that she might be missing out? She was at her dance rehearsal the other day and while the kids were waiting around for their turn, she was the only one without a screen to keep her busy backstage. She kept hovering next to other kids and asking if she could share. I felt really bad- the next rehearsal I encouraged her to bring some games, so she brought Spot It and CodeNames, but no one wanted to play with her since they had tablets, so she played by herself. I don’t know… I worry that at some point our strict screen limits will make her feel left out with her peers. (I remember not having a tv in our house til I was seven and I was the only one in class that didn’t have a favorite Saturday morning cartoon.)
So while I’m totally ok with our current limited screen free, I wonder if I should be increasingly looking for ways to help her self regulate screen time better rather than just strictly limiting it.
My kids are 8 & 5, and our screen time has gradually increased to the point where I’d like to reduce it. Any tips or suggestions on how to walk back that privilege?
My youngest usually watches TV 30 minutes before preschool and they often watch at least an hour or two in the afternoon and evening. Sometimes we watch a show as a family above that. Weekends can be a hot mess of several hours of various screens. Between work travel, a separate crunch period, and winter weather we’ve taken the path of least resistance.
While we can be lax about time, we are very strict on content. They only watch PBS, approved YouTube channels, and certain other approved shows/DVDs. The iPad apps are ones I like without too much flashing screens or annoying noises.
Now that husband has stopped traveling for work, kiddo watches less tv than she used to.
She has to be 100% ready to go out the door in the morning before the netflix goes on, which typically means she watches 10-15 minutes of tv in the morning. In the evening she’s getting better at playing independently and really enjoys coloring or going for walks, so we’ve been doing more of that. She watches about 30-45 minutes of tv most nights, some way less, some more. I’m happy with her overall level.
My mom totally creates a monster by letting her watch youtube videos on her ipad when she visits. That’s a whole other level of watching tv that we had to nip in the bud. Kid gets sucked into netflix, but its nothing like those crazy weird youtube videos, that I am not at all a fan of.
She watched about twice this much when I was parenting alone most of the time. It was not ideal, but whatever.
I’ve got a 3.5 and 2 year old (and a 3rd one still baking). We had a rough go at potty training (horrible #2 situation) that ultimately got resolved with some after dinner ipad-potty time every night. He has a few games he likes which I think are educational (Moose Math anyone?) and he loooooves the Sesame Street app. His 2 year old sister loves to watch with him (yes, while he sits on the potty). I’ve been trying to wean him off of this pooping-ipad association or at least keep it short (“Okay, one sesame street video of your choice and one of your sister’s choice and then we’re going to put it away.”) but sometimes I will let them snuggle up together for another 15 minutes on the sofa afterwards b/c they are just so cute snuggling each other and watching sesame street videos together and also sometimes I could use the time to get a few things done.
Otherwise, we generally do one full length Sesame Street episode on Saturday mornings (which is the only day of the week when we can sleep in, so I make a “breakfast snack” and pre-fill sippee cups every Friday night so that Saturday mornings when my son comes in our bedroom all I have to do is pull my daughter out of her crib and turn on Sesame Street and then we get an extra 52 minutes to let us “sleep in” (aka lay in bed half listening to Sesame Street in the next room until 7:45).
And of course on planes I let them watch as much as they want.
It works for us and yet I still sometimes feel guilty about even that much (particularly the ipad-potty bit after dinner every night). This parenting gig is crazy right?
I grew up watching absurd amounts of television, and I don’t want that for my kids (ages 2 and 5). We’re currently at about 10-15 minutes a day of screen time due to using Daniel Tiger as a bribe for toilet tries, but our general norm is 15 minutes a couple times a week, mostly FaceTime.
We don’t have any hard rules on screen time. Kiddo is 3, about to turn 4. Kiddo usually doesn’t watch much during the week because there’s not much time in the evening, and screen time always makes the transition to dinner and bedtime routine (or anything else) difficult.
Most weekends, we have one day at home where DH and I are working on the house or yard, and we let Kiddo watch a couple of hours of TV (at least) throughout the day while we get stuff done. The other weekend day, we try to have more family time, but often, we’ll let Kiddo watch something when we get home from a day full of activities.
We moved a few months ago, and Daniel Tiger was our babysitter (we were home, of course, just packing). Kiddo basically stopped watching Daniel Tiger after we moved because he was sick of it.