“No screen time” is a parenting fantasy. 4 exceptions we make

There are few more well-intentioned yet delusional people than the expectant parents who promise not to give their children any screen time. I know because I was (and sometimes still am) that parent.

It’s easy to get sucked into an idealistic fantasy of what raising children looks like when you’re lying on the couch, caressing your pregnant belly and thinking about your perfect little angel baby about to appear. But persevering while carrying your screaming toddler in a football grip through a crowded restaurant while looking back longingly at your half-eaten dinner takes a whole different level of dedication.

As delusional as I was about kids and screen time, it wasn’t entirely my fault. There is serious parent shaming going on on both sides of the debate – and a lot of conflicting information about the ‘right’ approach. When our first son was born, the advice from the… American Academy of Pediatrics was to postpone all screen time (TV, tablets or phones) until the child turned 2 years old. It has since lowered the age in its policy to 18 months. latest guidelinesas long as the screen time is ‘high quality content’ and there is an adult ‘ready to watch’, which kind of defeats the purpose. What actually constitutes high-quality content?

The World Health Organization isn’t much clearer, suggesting that children under 2 should avoid screens altogether and have “as little screen time as possible” until they turn 5, which again is highly subjective. What is ‘possible’ for one family may be completely different for another. Parents are then left to interpret any gray areas and navigate screen time as best suits their individual circumstances, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Seven years, three kids, and one pandemic into this whole parenting journey, we’re much less naive (and extreme) about screen time use. We’re still on the stricter side when it comes to setting boundaries, but we’ve built in some wiggle room as our family grows. Here are four cases where we make an exception.

Connecting with grandparents abroad

My parents live in El Salvador, and although they visit fairly regularly, video calls have been a lifeline for our family to stay in touch with our children. Even our 1-year-old, who is still allowed no screen time, can talk to her abuelita on WhatsApp as long as she can keep her attention.

We use Kinzoo’s for our two oldest (7 and 4). Together, a video calling app for the whole family that allows you to read books, play games or do activities with the other person while you’re on the phone. The $7 monthly subscription gives you unlimited talk time and access to the entire content library.

This is the only app they can use freely when grandparents are available (and as long as the grandparents can tolerate losing another game of Battleship to a four-year-old). The only caveat is that the success of the session is highly dependent on the grandparent’s technical knowledge and sometimes it causes more frustration than connection in our household when someone forgets to update the app.

owned by Mattel Caribu is another app with a similar concept that we used a lot when the kids were younger. The $10 monthly subscription includes content from Sesame Street, Thomas the Train, Hot Wheels and Barbie.

A free pass on flights

Everyone talks about crying babies on planes, but traveling with toddlers is the real nightmare. No amount of training can prepare you for the energy and patience required to entertain two very active boys in a crowded plane for 5 hours, while also dealing with your own fear of flying.

They would go through my entire bag of activities and snacks within the first hour, and I would spend the rest of the flight desperately trying to keep them from crawling on other passengers or running down the aisle. Once my kids were old enough to watch a movie, my travel experience completely changed. For a brief moment, I got a taste of what it was like to travel in complete silence again: just me, staring at my children, staring at a screen for the entire flight. No regrets.

I now have a 1 year old who won’t sit still anymore, but at least this time I only have to deal with one child instead of two. As a rule of thumb, I always bring a set of audio splitters so they can both listen on our one iPad at the same time and double check that I can watch the content in airplane mode for I’m leaving the house. I had to learn the hard way that just because the movie looks like it’s finished downloading doesn’t mean it’s ready to play outside your Wi-Fi network.

Road trips don’t fall under this exception, because our whining tolerance is exponentially higher when we don’t have to worry about other passengers.

Relax the rules at the weekend

When our middle son turned 3, we also started to relax the rules on weekends. He and his older brother can watch about 2 hours of TV, or one movie a day.

The intention is for this to be a shared experience with at least one parent watching alongside them, but if we’ve had a particularly miserable night of being up with their little sister, we reserve the right to use the allotted two hours to sneak a nap. in the middle of the day.

Our favorite streaming app at the moment is Disney Plusmostly because of Bluey, but also because they’re finally old enough to watch many of the classics I loved as a kid. Side note: Disney movies become different as an adult; What’s going on when they kill the parents in all their movies?

Before Disney, it was our favorite streaming service PBS kidswith great content for younger kids, including some of our favorites like Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger and Wild Kratz.

Hairstyles

In case you haven’t noticed from the cuts in the photo, I cut my kids’ hair myself. It’s a little tradition we’ve continued post-COVID times that will make for great yearbook photos (or bribe material) when they’re older. I’m still unsure if my daughter will get the matching bowl cut when it comes time to cut her hair too. After four years of doing this, you would think I would be able to cut their hair better and faster, but it still takes me about an hour per child. They have a LOT of hair and I’m afraid to use clippers.

The only way I can get them to sit still for that long while they chop off their hair is to have a screen for them. This is the only time they get the iPad free without having to share it with their brother, so they end up playing with the iPad. Marvel Lego app or look at the National Geographic Kids Channel on YouTube.

My biggest takeaway from setting screen time rules is that they should be customizable. This year I had to add school-related screen time to the mix because my second grader now has a Chromebook that he uses in class for math and reading programs. He has become addicted to one of the math games and asks to continue playing it at home. Whether this type of screen time will become one of our exceptions again remains to be seen.

Rather than try to navigate another gray area myself, I decided to involve him in the decision-making process. At age seven, he’s getting old enough to understand that screen time, while fun, can be hard to stop and that too much of it can keep him from doing other things he loves. Maybe he’ll get more screen time than I expected, but maybe he’ll also learn something about setting his own boundaries, something his tech-loving mother herself still struggles with.