Shownotes
A friend came over the other day. She'd just done a week on the Sunshine Coast with her three kids, the whole pack-up by herself. We were sitting at my kitchen table doing that thing where you're laughing and crying at the same time. She couldn't get her kids to put the bins out because they were glued to their iPads. I said yep, same. The deeper problem isn't just the iPad. It's that someone pulled every single support structure out from under us, handed us a screen, and then put the guilt on top.
What We Cover
- The Sunshine Coast kitchen table moment — the bins, the iPads, the laughing-crying
- The Christmas holidays Minecraft trap — how the rules got relaxed in December and what's still happening in May
- Three things that have completely changed about parenting in the last 40 years that nobody updated us on
- Why mums in 1990 weren't negotiating screen time — and what they had for free that we just don't
- The anticipatory regulation load — why parenting an ADHD child is three jobs stacked on top of each other, not one
- The dopamine input the world used to supply — and what happens when you take the iPad without replacing it
- Why every screen time recommendation contradicts every other one, and the researchers fight each other publicly
- We are the first generation parenting through this. There is no generational wisdom on iPads. Nobody knows the right amount. Not the paediatricians, not your mother-in-law, not the friend down the road.
Free Resources
Surviving the Mental Load of the School Year: https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-school-year-mental-load-kit/
Household Family Meeting Template: https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-household-family-meeting-template/
Related Episodes
References & Further Reading
- Parent–child interaction load in ADHD households: Barkley, R. A., Anastopoulos, A. D., Guevremont, D. C., & Fletcher, K. E. (1992). Adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Mother–adolescent interactions, family beliefs and conflicts, and maternal psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 20(3), 263–288. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00916692
- The collapse of unsupervised childhood: Skenazy, L. (2021). Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass. Movement: https://letgrow.org
- The case that screens are driving a youth mental health crisis: Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation. Penguin Press.
- The case that the panic is overblown: Etchells, P. (2024). Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time. Piatkus. (Named alongside Haidt because the two contradict each other — which is the point.)
- No strong causal evidence that screens cause ADHD: Levelink, B., et al. (2021). Association between recreational screen time and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. JAMA Pediatrics. Via: https://www.adhdevidence.org/blog/pair-of-large-u-s-cohort-studies-find-little-to-no-evidence-of-association-between-child-and-adolescent-adhd-and-digital-media-screen-time
- Insufficient evidence for hard screen-time limits (2019 guidance): Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. (2019). The health impacts of screen time: A guide for clinicians and parents. (Note: this guidance was withdrawn in February 2024 — the position above is as of their 2019 publication.)
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