Cultivating a screen free mindset is the first step to helping your kids develop a healthy relationship with technology. Today, you’ll learn what it means to have a screen free mindset (it doesn’t mean no screens ever!) and how to get started setting new limits with your family.

You’ll learn:

• The problems with too much screen time
• Screen time best practices for kids of all ages
• How I managed screen time for my kids from the early days through the teen years
• Guidelines to help you adopt a screen free mindset
• Examples of limits around screen use (including what to do when they won’t turn it off)

While you may not approach technology use in exactly the same way I have with my family, I hope this information will help you figure out what you want your family’s guidelines to be. 

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As a parenting coach, I’ll never tell you what your values should be or what you should or shouldn’t do. My goal is to help you understand what your values are and give you strategies to help your life align with the values you choose. 

Ultimately, what I stand for is raising kids in a way that does not cause harm. As more research comes out about technology and screen use, we’re seeing that too much screen use actually does harm children. 

There aren’t a lot of protections for kids in the virtual world. Tech companies aren’t interested in limiting children's use because they get more money and data from that use. This means that it falls to parents to create those limits.

Today, I’ll provide some best practices for kids and screens. While you may not approach technology use in exactly the same way I have with my family, I hope this information will help you figure out what you want your family’s guidelines to be. 

Screen Use Best Practices

When it comes to things like sleep and nutrition, most of us have a general idea of what kids need. You can use those guidelines as a baseline ideal. You know how you want your kids to eat and how much sleep you want them to get, but you also know that some days will be closer to that ideal than others. 

The Centers for Disease Control, Pediatrics Magazine and the Journal of Adolescent Health (among others) are starting to establish similar guidelines for kids and screens. For our purposes, screens include tv, phone, tablet, computer or any other devices. 

Here’s what they’ve laid out by age:

• 0 to 3 years old - no screens
• 3 to 7 years old - 30-60 minutes per day
• 7 to 12 years old - about an hour a day
• 12 to 15 years old - 1.5 hours per day
• 16 and older - 2 hours per day

Currently, most kids ages 5 and up are getting around 5 hours per day of discretionary screen time - far beyond the recommended amount.

And studies have shown that kids who have more than the recommended amount of screen time tend to have worse executive functioning, declines in academic performance, delayed language development and detrimental effects on social and emotional growth. They are also more likely to have obesity, sleep disorders, or mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. 

Screen Free Mindset

If this is a little overwhelming to you, you’re not alone. Kids love screens, and you’re a busy mom. It’s hard to manage the time and boredom and all of it. But you can start with small changes, including the way you think about screens and your family.  

Screen free mindset means that you make an intentional decision that your child's free, unstructured time should be screen free as the default choice. For example, if you’re waiting at the doctor’s office or in a restaurant, rather than handing them your phone, you decide that it will be screen-free time. 

The idea is that, instead of automatically giving screen time as the default, you are being intentional about when people are allowed to use screens in your family.  

Try thinking about it like this: When you think about your child’s diet, you plan meals, and dessert is a bonus. With a screen free mindset, devices are the dessert - not an essential. 

There is an opportunity cost every time your child uses a device. That means they could be using that time to do something else with their brain and body, including:

• Moving their bodies
• Free play
• Outdoor time
• Reading, writing or drawing
• Interacting with people face-to-face 

Screen free time gives kids opportunities to find other ways to entertain themselves and cope with hard moments or feelings without using technology as a pacifier. It also allows them to practice waiting, impulse control and attention to their bodies. 

Kids are wired to create and explore and be bored. Your work is to cultivate the mindset that most of your child’s life is going to be screen free.

Managing Screen Time

If your child has been using screens more than the recommended amount, I don’t want you to stress out or feel ashamed. You’re a great parent, and you have lots of time. They are still developing. 

The goal now is to work on that screen free mindset and create more screen free, unstructured time for your kid. 

Here are some guidelines and strategies to follow:

Set new boundaries, including physical boundaries. Decide what limits you want to put in place. When will your kid have access to screens - how often and for how long? What devices are allowed? What limits will you set on maturity ratings? Are there conditions they’ll need to meet before screen time (e.g. homework or chores done, have played outside and moved their body, etc.)?

When it comes to physical boundaries, think out of sight, out of mind. One way to avoid kids sneaking screens is to keep them in a locked safe or cabinet during screen free times. 

A few other things to consider are:

• Parental controls. Get familiar with how you can block certain content or sites, including social media and YouTube. 
• Don’t allow screens in bedrooms. If you do, make sure devices are turned in before bedtime. 
• Be aware of your own screen use. You might be looking up a recipe for dinner or responding to an important message, but to your kid, device use all looks the same. You might even decide to set limits for yourself when it comes to scrolling social media or other discretionary screen time.

Communicate the new limits with confidence. Commitment and confidence are the keys to success. Let them know that this is how your family will be doing things from now on, and stick to it. There will be some resistance, frustration and complaining. You can handle it. 

Show compassion. When your kid is complaining or arguing, you might be tempted to punish them. Try to allow for those big feelings and realize that they are a part of the boredom gap. If problems are created during that big feeling cycle, you can follow up with consequences as usual.

The truth is that creating these new limits can be really challenging, especially if you are resetting from some overuse. Your kids will probably resist these new rules, but I want you to know that that difficulty is temporary. 

Your child will be able to overcome that need for quick satisfaction. Let them work through it and trust that on the other side is more peace and ease. 

Trust that your values of creating an emotionally healthy kid are the most important. It can be hard, but it's worth it.

Free Resources:

• Episode 128 - Encouraging Boredom
• National Institutes of Health - National Library of Medicine

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Connect With Darlynn: 

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Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm

Darlynn Childress, host of this podcast, and I am a life and

parenting coach. And today's topic is screen

free mindset. And so I'm gonna kinda explain what I mean

by that, and then give you some really strong strategies

of how to manage screen time in your family, which I know is a

big concern for all of you, especially in light of, you

know, some of the things that we've been hearing in the news lately, just about

the anxiety and depression and just how how much our

youth are struggling and how much technology is really

contributing to that. So I'm sure you're a. I'm sure you really want to

find strategies for that. So I'm going to give you some today, which

is great. So screen free mindset. Okay.

So let me first go back and say a little

background on why I'm doing this episode. One

thing that I am committed to as a coach

and as a parenting coach is that I don't tell

you what to do in terms of, you know,

what your values should be. So I don't say, you know, you should

eat this food or your kids should sleep at this time. I really try

to help you understand your values and then give you

strategies to make those happen. And if you're

aligned with my approach, you know, I I know that your

values are to be a compassionate parent while also

staying calm and setting limits and boundaries.

Right? So in that way, we're all a, but kind of in the nitty

gritty of do we let our kids stay up late? Do we let them eat

cookies or not eat cookies or things like that? I really don't wanna get in

the weeds on all of those specifics. So I was talking to my friend

about this, and I said, I really wanna do this episode where I talk about

limiting screen time for kids. And I said to my best

friend, Tiffany, I said, you know, I'm struggling with it because I don't really wanna

tell people what to do. And I also don't really want to

make parents feel more stressed or have moms feel things that

they're, you know, feel guilty. She said, you know, you're right. You don't

tell people what to do except like you don't believe in spanking. And I

was like, yeah, I don't believe in spanking. And I

and I definitely say don't hurt your kids. Right? Don't hit your kids.

As we talked about it a little bit more, I realized that what I

stand for is not harming children. And what I am always

doing is advocating strategies so that we don't hurt

kids. Right? That we don't shame them. We don't spank them. We don't create pain.

We don't create emotional distance and all of that.

And as I have been going through the research

recently and actually for the last 15 years as I've raised my

kids in a technology based society, I've made decisions

about how I wanna approach technology and and creating

a slow tech family. And what I a is that

a lot of technology, a lot of screen use does hurt

children. When young adults have

excess opportunity to be on their devices, to be in social

media, to have, you know, unfettered access to

the Internet, Kids can get hurt in the virtual

world a we don't have a lot of limits and a lot of

protections for children in the virtual world. A lot of

that is hardware based. Tech companies make it very

difficult for parents to create parental controls. The tech

companies aren't actually interested in limiting children's use

because they get more and more money and revenue and data and all of

that from the more use of any any human, right, children

included. So there's not a lot of motivation to create limits and

then the a then Become lot of us as the parents. I like I

said, I I don't like to say, like, don't let your kids use devices or

something like that Become it feels really, you know, shaming, and I don't

wanna do that to you ever. But I do want to give you

best practices. And I think that's really helpful in parenting because it

can be really difficult to figure out what,

like, what I should do, especially when there aren't a lot of clear

guidelines about something. We now kind of know in

general, like, about nutrients and whether kids

should have sugar or not or whether they should have vegetables. And, like,

we kinda know we kinda generally know about how much sleep kids should

get. And so when you have these basic understandings of

what fundamentally a human needs to grow and develop, you can

kind of implement that with a lot of grace for yourself.

But when you have the structure and the backbone of these are the

best practices, these are sort of ideal scenario a you work

from there, then you get a good a good couple weeks

in, you're feeling good. Maybe have a week where your kid is sick and then

you overuse technology for a week or 2 or you're ill or whatever it

is, that's fine. You just reset back to that kind of

baseline ideal philosophy. So that's what I wanna give to you

today. Just as a premise here, I would like to

re really clarify that overreliance

on tech, overreliance on devices

is hurting kids. And so straight off the bat, I wanna give you some

numbers about that. Kids who are 3 to 7 year olds,

according to the CDC, the,

Center For Disease Control, according to Pediatrics Magazine, The Journal of

Adolescent Health, there's a lot of guidelines now

being established about how much time kids should

spend on any sort of screen, whether that's an iPad, the

television, your phone, you know, a computer,

a Kindle, anything like that. Not a Kindle for reading, but a Kindle with, like,

images. 0 to 3 should be 0.

That's just the pediatric recommendation is that kids under 3

don't need any screen time at all. 3 to 7, it's in half an

hour to an hour a day. So just really

think about that includes all device use, including your

phone if you hand it to them at a restaurant or something like that. From

7 to 12, it should be about an hour

a a day for discretionary screen time. For

12 to 15, a and a half hours. So that includes

watching television, being on scrolling on social media,

spending time talking on the phone and FaceTiming their friends. And

then after 16, 2 hours is the recommendation of

discretionary screen time. Crazy

enough, most kids from, like, age 5 and up

are getting around 5 hours a day of discretionary use.

So that means their free time in their free time, they're spending

5 plus hours. So that is a lot

considering that at 16 years old, 2 hours is the recommendation.

Now you hear this and you're like, okay. I get

it. It's harming my kids. So what do I do about

it? Because my kids love it, and I'm busy, and I'm stressed, and

I don't know how to manage the time and their boredom and

all of it. Right? So what I wanted to talk about was

this, concept of screen free mindset. What does that mean?

Like, as a life coach, right, I help you figure out

how to structure your thoughts, your feelings,

and your actions to align with your values. If you

have a default mindset or a negative

mindset around something like, oh my god. I'm a

terrible mother. That's gonna make you feel overwhelmed and

sad, and then you're gonna then take actions either over a

or giving a. And then you don't get the life that you want.

So we all have default negative mindsets, and

that's like what your brain goes to when it's on automatic.

So one thing I teach all the time is that misbehavior is not an

emergency. That's a an intentional

mindset because your default thought is, oh, my god. My kid

hit the kid on the park, and this is a disaster. And all the moms

are gonna judge me, and I ought to just think about it. And this is

an emergency, and I better do something now. And you feel, like, really stressed about

it. And a stressed mind does not make the best

decisions. So we train our pair our brains, our

mom brain to say misbehavior is not an emergency.

This is not an emergency. And then when you are calming your

soothing, your nervous system by saying this is not an emergency, you can then move

forward and make a better decision and connect with your kid and and then set

some limits and follow that kind of calm mama process.

Okay. So that's my role as a life coach, and that's a big part about,

you know, managing your mind, your mindset. So now what

is screen free mindset? Screen free mindset

is making an intentional decision that your child's or

your children's free unstructured time should be screen free as

the default choice. So you're turning your default

thinking into screen free. So for example, let me give you some

examples. Here's a. Like in the doctor's a. Right? Your kids are waiting

their turn and you hand them your phone so that they can watch a little

bit of Bluey or whatever and it you occupy them with the device.

That is using the device as the default, and I want

you to switch that to screen free default.

A screen free mindset thinking I'm not gonna give my

child the phone at the restaurant or in the doctor's office

or while I'm cooking or, you know, in the mornings after they

get dressed. I'm going to actively choose

that unstructured free time

is screen free in this family. When you

choose that as the parent and you don't

allow that screen to be the 1st option, a option, 3rd

option, when you let that be sort of the like, not

last case scenario Become I don't want it to be something that you give into.

I I just want you to be intentional about when you are allowed to use

screens in your family when you aren't a making a decision

that there are times that we don't do that. We

don't do that while we're waiting. We don't do that in the morning. We don't

do that in the car. We don't do that right when we get home from

something. We don't do it when the friends are over. You know, we don't do

all while we're eating like I said. Thinking about this as

your your mindset will help you

not feel the pressure to give in to your

kids' desire to have screen. Last week, I talked

about how we wanna encourage boredom. We need to give our

kids opportunities to find

other solutions and other ways to entertain themselves and other ways to

cope with messy feelings or or hard moments

without using technology as a pacifier.

A lot of you will give up the kids binky, you know, their pacifier

around age 3 or a half or something like that Become, you know, it's

not in their best interest to have that pacifier. It's not good for their teeth.

It's not good for their emotional regulation and all of that.

And that's kind of the same thing with screens. We

over pacify kids by giving them the device in times when we

really want them to be able to practice new

skills. Now when we have we give

our kids the device as the default, it does have a

negative effect on them. National Institutes of Health has a National Library

of Medicine. It's a clearing house for reputable medical and

psychological studies. You can look it up, the National Institute of Health,

and they have tons and tons of really highly qualified research in

there. And I read this article about the impacts of

screens on kids overuse. So outside of those guidelines

that I read a few minutes ago. Kids who have more

than is recommended amount of time, they have worse executive functioning,

their academic performance declines, They are delayed in

language development. They have detrimental effects on social

and emotional growth. They are more likely to

have obesity, sleep disorders, mental

health conditions like depression and and anxiety. It can

fuel aggression. It can harm a psychological health.

It can impair emotional comprehension, you know, make it harder to

interpret emotions. All of these negative effects

when your kids have too much screen time

more than what is recommended. So if you have

a 7 year old and they're using more than 1 hour a

day total, including television, iPad,

your phone, computer games, any of that, then

they are not developing in the

most optimum sense. Now here's

why. There is an opportunity cost

every time your child uses their device. They

are not using that time and that brain

and that body to do something else. So the more time

that's taken up by devices, the less opportunity there

is for other parts of their body, emotional and

mental development. So one of the things that happens is

that you don't move your body a lot of times when you're using screens.

So that's a missed opportunity. You don't have free play. You

don't spend time outside. You may not be sleeping. You're

probably not reading or drawing. You're not

interacting with other people face to face because you have your head, your

face in an iPad. If you have multiple kids and they all have

iPads and they all get individual time, well, that's a missed opportunity

of sitting together and doing something together with their sibling

or with you. Actually, as an opportunity calm just for

pure play with their sibling when they spend most of their free time

on their devices. They don't learn to wait. They don't learn to entertain

themselves. Their impulse control is affected

and their ability to sustain attention is affected.

You think about, like, what it what it takes to follow a

bumblebee in real life outside, you know, can kinda take a while to,

like, it and then it goes away and you find it again. Oh, there it

is. There it is. And just like paying attention to that a your whole body

is engaged versus watching a little bumblebee on a video.

There's just such a different experience. So what we

wanna be doing is we wanna be creating downtime.

We wanna create screen free time. We wanna have

that be a priority that our mindset is that most of my

child's life is screen free. That you have a little

kid, they have 24 hours in a day, and they're

going to spend less than an hour of that

on their device. That's a. If you really commit

to most of our life is screen free. Why we do that

is because kids they're wired to create and explore and

be bored. And the more we entertain our kids, the more we

pacify them, then they don't know what to

do when they are in that boredom gap like I

talked about last week. They don't get to discover and be in

that discovery mode that I talked about. So we

don't want to have our this entire generation of children

not being able to, deepen their

own internal worlds and their own

internal guide about playing and what interests them and

following their own curiosity and creativity.

So I hope I've convinced you that a screen free mindset is valuable and

it's really, really important that it is a benefit to your

kids That when you have them using more

screen than is recommended in a day or in

a week, that your kids are negatively impacted.

Now I don't want you to feel like, oh my god. I've ruined my children.

I let them watch 2 hours a day, and they're only 5 years old or

whatever. Don't do that. There is no reason to

look back and be like, I messed them up. For 1, your kid's brain

is neuroplastic. They're still developing. You're a great parent.

You have lots of time. It's not a big deal. So

don't do any of that guilt a, like, that looking

back and beating yourself up because it's really not useful. That's not a

great mindset. It's not helpful. What we wanna do is have a

positive mindset of, oh, look, I have this new information. I'm gonna

adopt a screen free mindset for my family, and we're gonna move forward.

And I'm gonna help my kids learn how to be bored, learn how

to find their own interests, learn how to overcome discomfort without

having technology as their go to. What is your role

as a parent? What is it? Right? So you have a

couple of different roles. A

is setting the boundary. And so I'm gonna walk you

through a step by step guideline of how to do that. The others

are using those parental controls on

your devices, on your phones. One thing that's handy to

have is just a small personal safe in

your family that you use to put lock up

stuff that you don't want your kids to have access to. Instead of trying

to teach your kids to be responsible and not sneak

the iPad and not sneak the iPhone and not sneak the remote

control and all of that. That's a really hard thing for them to

resist. And so we wanna just have it out of sight out of mind.

So if you wanna have some of these guidelines and put these stuff, these boundaries

in place, also put some physical boundaries in place as well. I

don't know how much our little safe cost a it's not that wasn't that expensive.

Like, I don't remember, to be honest. And we just have it in a cupboard

and it has a code and we just have put computer

cables, remote controls, phones,

iPads, A, all of that stuff just kind of locked away. And then

it comes out at times when I say it's okay, and I hand it to

them. To be honest, we also use the safe because we have a

liquor cabinet that is, locked with a magnet key. And so we

keep the magnet key in there. We just keep everything kind of that we

don't want our kids to be tempted by in that space.

Obviously, they're getting older now, so it's less of an issue, but it's been very

handy. Okay. Understanding the parental

limits on the phone, on the iPad, on the computer,

putting up those blocks that block certain websites, that

block pornography, that block certain searches, all of those dismantling

A a Instagram and Snapchat and things like

that. If you're not if your kid's not really ready for any of

those those social media apps as well as

YouTube, most likely your child under 10 does not

need to ever have access to YouTube. It's not necessary. That's

enough programming and activities that are outside of

YouTube that your kids can have access to. YouTube can be such

a rabbit hole. And the way the algorithm is, it really can hurt your

Childress know, the explore page and what comes up on the side

is so tempting to little kids. So I know it's handy

because you don't have to be logged into, like, certain streaming services or whatever.

But in general, I would say just to block block YouTube as well.

So as a parent, you want to set the boundaries and you wanna use those

behavioral controls. Another strategy is to just

never allow screens in the bedroom until their, you know,

kids are 14 or whatever. Depends on your

computer, the computer they use for school and where they do their studying.

But for the most part, kids don't really need to have devices in their bedroom.

And if they do, you can also have those be turned

in at the end of the night so that you know that they're getting their

sleep. And then, of course, I want you to be thinking about your own screen

time knowing how when your face is on your

phone, you you might be doing something important, like looking up

a recipe for dinner. But to your child, they don't

know what you're doing on your device. So the more

analog you can bring things in and the, you know, list

making and, you know, using a laptop instead of your

phone or something like that. So your child can look over your shoulder and see

what you're doing so it doesn't look like you're completely distant.

I would encourage you to set screen limits for yourself around scrolling

on Instagram or Twitter or

TikTok or whatever it is that you are interested in. For

me, personally, over the last few months, I've just taken all that stuff off

my phone because I don't want to be mindlessly looking at it

anymore Become I want to be able to be present in my life

and also be able to pay attention to my kids when they're around.

Let's get into some of this actual, like, nuts and bolts of how to

do this. So we wanna just remember that the value is

a screen free life as much as possible

with the screen being like dessert. So you think

about your child's diet, how you don't

base your life around the dessert. Right?

You don't look at their eating habits and you're like, okay, where am I gonna

put in dessert here? Or like, let's structure our whole eating around

dessert. You don't do that. You go where are the basic meals?

What's the rhythm of our day? What do I want them to be eating? And

then dessert is just like a bonus. So in a screen free mindset,

screen is a bonus. Screen is dessert. Screen is

not essential. It's not an absolute nutritional

need, which it is not. Kids don't need

devices. Okay? They don't that's, like, not developmentally necessary. Alright.

So I'm gonna go through the numbers again and then talk about how

to do your own tech plan. So the,

again, under under 30, no use. They never need it. Don't hand

them your phone at a restaurant. Don't you know, it's not an I mean, okay.

I'm saying don't, but, like, of course, you can. I'm just saying when you

do that, it's an opportunity cost. Little kids, we really don't want

them to get accustomed to having a

tech pacifier. So 3 to 7, half an

hour to 1 hour a day is the recommendation

from pediatrics magazine and the CDC.

7 to 12, which is pretty much all of elementary school

and up to the beginning of middle school is 1 hour a

day. And then throughout middle school, it would be a and a half

hours. And then after 16, about 2

hours. So I know it's harder after

16, and I'll talk about that in a couple of episodes from now how to

teach your teenagers how to handle their own tech. But for now,

just kind of keeping these guidelines in place. Now I'm gonna be really

honest that I had much stricter

rules for my kids during the time of

their development. So when they were

0 to 5, we did 1 hour a week,

not an hour a day. So the kids were really only allowed

to watch 1 or 2 shows a day a week.

And so it was kinda like a 20 minute show here, a 20 minute show

there, or maybe 2:20 minute shows, you know, on a on a

Saturday morning. I really kept it super limited.

Those that was on purpose. And then from 5 to 10,

they also still did not use devices Monday through

Thursday. So we just had a screen free life A through Thursday.

There was nothing ever before school has never happened before

school a then nothing really after school all

through elementary school and beginning of middle school. We just had it

on the weekend and you could do, like, a to 2 hours on the weekend.

So it's, like, a hour on a Saturday and, you know, 2 hours on

a Sunday. I wasn't that strict about it. It just was, like, 1 to 2

hours on the weekend. I did not let my kids play video

games until Sawyer was 10, and neither of them got a

device until Sawyer was 12. That's my younger one. So

because they're so close in age and only one grade apart, we just kinda

did things as if they were twins in some ways. When Sawyer turned 10, they

could play video games on the weekend for 1 hour.

They didn't get phones until Soraya was 12, so Lincoln would be 14.

And there was a lot of screen time limits

on their device. So they have very, very limited amount of time.

Now they could play video games in middle school,

like, the late middle school and high school. You could play them on the weekdays

as long as their grades were 3 point o. If they drop below, they can

only do it on the weekends. If they drop below a 1 point o, then

they couldn't have them at all. That worked really well, I gotta say,

until the pandemic a then whatever. All the rules were broken in our

family after the pandemic. But by that time, my kids

were 14 16, So it's a little bit different for us.

We didn't have iPads back then, but the kids did have A,

and they could use them on car drives over an hour and on

airplanes. That was it. They never really got to use those

devices at all. It was just not part of their life. So

anytime they were using any sort of device, it was a television in

the family room, and they had to share what they were looking

at. Sometimes they could use my phone for a little bit. Like, they

could take turns. They can play subway surfer or something like that. I don't remember

all the a, but then they'd have to take turns a it would be on

the weekends still. We did family movies on Fridays, so that was

always kind of fun. We would often have friends over on Fridays, so that

wouldn't end up happening. But if there was nothing going on, we would have family

movies on Fridays. And family time, you know, doing

digital entertainment as a group is very different than

individual screens. So you can decide how you

wanna handle your a hour. Is that as a group

with your kids, your 7 to 12 year olds in the evening, they you guys

all watch a show together. That's so much more valuable than each kid

on an iPad separate from each other in their own immersed world.

And then the way I handled the summer was basically, like, whatever I was doing

on the weekends was what I did in the summer. So I kind of acted

as if the summer was, weekends. Okay. I

hope that is helpful. If you're doing something different, that's fine. Just follow the

CDC's guidelines. But if you kinda want to be a little bit more

observant, you can listen back to the way I did it or you can email

me, and I'll, like, tell you exactly how I handled it. Okay.

So now here's the strategies. I know we're going a little bit long, but I

think this is a episode. Okay. So here are the strategies.

1, the first thing you always have to do when you set up a rule

or a limit or a new rhythm or a new routine is you

have to make some decisions. So you want to

figure out your screen time a. Really think

about what is dessert. When do you serve

dessert? When do you serve screens? Do you do it

every day? Do you do it once a week? When you

do do it, is it for an hour? Is it for less than an

hour? How does it work in your family?

When these are the questions you have to ask yourself. When do you want

your kids to use tech? That means any device at all.

When they use tech, how much time can they use it for?

So when, what day of the week, how much

time, which devices are allowed?

Is it only the main TV? Is it

computers? Is it an iPad? Is it your phone? Is

it their phone? Really think about what is allowed,

which device, which games or apps

or access do they have? If they're playing

video games, are you a family that allows mature games or are you

not? We were very strict about that. We did not allow that. What do they

have access to? Do they have access to shows that are beyond their

emotional or mental maturity? You have to think

about these decisions and pre decide. That's really

the most important part is just having a plan, just figuring

it out. So that way you're not every day going, oh, I don't know. Should

I let them use an iPad? I don't know. Just like

a decide and then you communicate it to them. So you get to

say your limit of when they can use

device, where they can use device, and for how long. So

you say you can say you are welcome to use the

computer for 30 minutes as

long as the conditions that you set. So conditions could

be that chores are a. They've been outside. They've moved their

body. They've done non screen entertainment, or that there

were no problems getting off the devices the day prior, or you can

use a combination. So let me give you some examples of

limits. You are welcome to use your device as long as there are no

problems getting off. So you give them the

video game a, the iPad, or something like that, and then

you say, you know, here you go. You have 30 minutes. And then 30 minutes

later, you're like, hey. Time's up. You know, it's time to turn off your device,

and they start fighting and begging and kicking you and

throwing things at you. And you just say, oh, looks like there's some

problems getting off. I'll wait. You wait a few minutes. You let

them settle down. Don't try to get in a tug of war or anything like

that. Just kinda wait. And then the next time they have option

to use it, you say, oh, nope. I'm not gonna let

you use your screen today because I don't wanna have to worry about you

having trouble getting off of it like last time, And

that's it. Here's some more. You can play mature

video games once you are blank age. You can just make it a rule. You

can play video play mature video games once you are 14.

If they're 9, they wanna play a game, you say no. Just say no.

You are welcome to have a social media account once you are blank age. I

would suggest 14. There is some guidelines that is saying

16, but I say 14 is probably the

earliest that they should have any sort of social media account. I will be happy

to pay for your cell data plan as long as you keep location tracking

on. You can use the tablet as long as you rest in your room for

30 a, or you can just say screen time

is in this house. It's from 4 to 5 as long as your homework is

done. You can also say we don't do any

screens until after dinner. That's just how it is in this family.

You get to make the rules in your a, and you

just be confident in your reasons. Don't feel the need to explain

all your reasons to your kids and don't argue or justify or

lecture or try to convince them and tell them how the screens will rot their

brains and all that stuff. That doesn't really help. All that

helps is that you have a rule. Your children

don't really understand how sugar affects their bodies long term

or how the lack of fiber will hurt their tummy. They don't

need to know all that. You know that, and you just tell them the

rules. No matter what your screen time limits

are, the most important predictors of success are commitment and

confidence. Stay committed to it. So

now limits, they're kind of the easy part, like setting up the rules and then

but the it's the resistance to the limits that are is hard.

Right? It's that boredom gap, that dysregulation, that frustration,

that jealousy. I've shared this before that Lincoln wanted to start playing

Minecraft when he was in 3rd grade, which was 8 years old. And we said

he couldn't play video games till he was 12. So he waited

4 full years while his peers were doing video games. And that

was really hard for him, and he complained a lot about

it. The third part about having screen time limits is

showing compassion, allowing your children to express

their feelings, to be compassionate about it. You're

going to want to punish them even further sometimes

if they complain or argue, and it's like, if you don't stop complaining, you're

never getting your iPad again or whatever it is. Try

not to connect that boredom gap with

the use of the screen. So just kind of

allowing for those big feelings a then maybe if they create problems during that big

feeling cycle to do a consequence that's different, like doing a couple

extra chores or play with you or help you with the kitchen or something like

that Become it you don't wanna make the screen

time limits unclear. Right? We wanna just know

this is what we allow in our family, and you get to use the

devices on these days at this time, as long as there are

no problems getting off them. So, of course,

as somebody kind of goes step by step, they're like, figure out a

plan, communicate your limit, hold your boundary, have compassion

that you're like, yeah. Right. Easier said than done.

So I wanna acknowledge that creating these kinds

of boundaries and limits can be really challenging, especially

if you are resetting some overuse.

If your kids have become reliant on devices,

they're going to resist these new rules, and it's gonna be difficult.

But I want you to know that that difficulty is temporary, that

actually your children crave real

life interaction. They crave using their body. They

crave being outside. We need to trust

that their natural species based biology

is going to be dominant and

they will be able to overcome that quick

need for satisfaction by just trusting and

letting them work through it and get to the other

side. I have watched my kids detox

from dig digital screens and give I've we've done screen free

days. We've done screen free weeks. We've done, you know, digital detoxes.

And whenever we get out of balance, I've done those things.

And I've always seen that my kids are better behaved,

happier, more likely to be creative, more likely to

entertain themselves when they don't have devices at the

ready. So trust on the other side is

peace and ease even when it's difficult in the middle.

Trust that your values of creating an emotionally

healthy kid are the most important. It can be

hard, but it's worth it. And that's what I wanna leave you with

that a screen free mindset might be hard, but

it's worth it. Alright. I hope this episode has been helpful. I

really do. I hope you don't go beat yourself up about anything because that's not

necessary. We're all doing our best. We're all trying to figure out what to

do, and I'm here for you. And so

if you wanna figure out a screen plan for your family and you wanna

book a complimentary consultation with me to talk about this, I'd be happy to talk

about it with you. If you wanna join the Calm Mama Club and just work

through this with us, we'd be happy to have you there. That's a

membership program. It's $30 a a. And I just

yeah. I'm here for you. So you reach out if you need anything. Let me

know how it's going. I'm just also really curious about how this is

landing for you and whether you feel pressure or you feel relief or

hope or something. Alright. I hope you are having a great week,

and I will talk to you next time.