for those who DO limit screen time ... - Page 2

[WCM]

thank you loahaire. I too hear that I'm depriving them because they do not each own DS's, or a Wii or whatever gaming stuff is available. We don't own ANY gaming stuff, we just don't. They don't ask, we don't seek. Life is good.

Nor do we own a boat.

[puddleduck]

We limit screen time because DS1 would sit in front of a screen for 6+ hours a day. We don't have a tv but they can watch dvd's on the laptop or play games (lego website). We tend to save screen time until the afternoon, so 4pm onwards we tidy and then they get screen time until DH gets home and we have dinner - so about 6pm. I am quite flexible, this morning DS2 wanted to watch a phonics dvd so they watched that and now they are in the garden.

Once a month we have a 'boss day' where DS1 (and now DS2) get to choose exactly what to do eat etc - so they watch 6 hours of cartoons, eat biscuits and cereal and go to bed late - seems to get it out of their system.

[frugalmum]

I am considering unschooling my children and this is my #1 concern. I know from past experience that leaving them to their own amends means that they play video games all.day.long.. And they watch each other play video games all.day. long. TV/ movies are not so much of a problem, they do show some restraint there. But they have zero restraint with videogames. I have experienced video game addiction myself (WoW) so this is a huge concern of mine.

If we homeschool my plan is going to be-- no TV/ dvds/ videogames except on the weekend. Computer use during the week only for non-video game things.... like writing, drawing, reading. If I go through with this I will come back and update.

[SundayCrepes]

Originally Posted by frugalmum

I am considering unschooling my children and this is my #1 concern. I know from past experience that leaving them to their own amends means that they play video games all.day.long.. And they watch each other play video games all.day. long. TV/ movies are not so much of a problem, they do show some restraint there. But they have zero restraint with videogames. I have experienced video game addiction myself (WoW) so this is a huge concern of mine.

If we homeschool my plan is going to be-- no TV/ dvds/ videogames except on the weekend. Computer use during the week only for non-video game things.... like writing, drawing, reading. If I go through with this I will come back and update.

Unschooling is a spectrum and there are no unschooling police. This thread shows you there are plenty of unschooling parents who limit screen time. We certainly do.

[bright_eyes]

We are unschooling and have a no-screen policy. This may change in the future but it works great right now. Ds is 4 and never watches tv, movies, or plays computer games. He used to watch quite a lot of movies when he was 1-2) but when I decided to limit it, I found it too hard. I thought one/day was too many but he was too little to understand time and didn't get that some days he could watch something and some days he couldn't. So I just decided to completely limit it. At first he asked often but eventually he stopped. All I told him was that we have too many other things to do with our time and that instead we would occasionally have a family movie night.

Since we started this (over a year ago) we've had one movie night. And lately we've been watching some Signing Time dvd's to learn more signs to teach the baby. So signing time has been the only exception to our policy.

This has worked so well for us! We don't have a tv, and ds has never watched tv in our home, only other homes. Dh and I don't watch a lot of movies and we never play video/computer games.

Ds never asks to watch movies and we love how our life has been without movies being part of it.

Maybe as he gets older we will have movie night more often or let him watch more educational stuff but right now we are content to keep things as they are.

[bright_eyes]

Originally Posted by laohaire

One question to ask: is it LIMITING your children if something is not part of your lifestyle?

We don't have a boat - is it a LIMIT or a RULE that we don't do boating activities? No, we just don't have a boat.

Why isn't it the same for TV?

Well, I know why: because "everybody" has a TV. Still, it irks me, this concept that it's "deprivation" to not have TV, or candy, or whatever be part of your lifestyle. Everyone assumes there's huge control issues and so on - and maybe in some families there are. But there's no reason that a family without a TV can't just be - a family without a TV. No fights about it. No rules. No oppression. No limits. Just no TV.

I agree! TV just isn't a part of our life style. And we tried letting ds watch just movies but it wasn't working for the lifestyle that we want to have. So we cut it out. And we've been quite happy. I really doubt ds feels deprived because of this.

[Juvysen]

I'm working on limiting down to just one a week. On sundays we do "family movie and picnic night" at which we eat in the living room and watch a movie (normally we eat in the dining room, so it's exciting). It's sort of a "let's get back to the week tomorrow" signal to the kids (i.e. daddy's going to work tomorrow), and they like it... I'm hoping I can limit down to that at least for a while. I hate that my 5 month old gets absorbed into the tv if there's something on. *sigh*

[St. Margaret]

Originally Posted by Qalliope

That's interesting. For us it's the exact opposite. I was concerned with ds' computer/tv/video game obsession and his lack of interest in other activities. We just moved to no screen time when we first get out of bed. If he starts his day with it, he gets mentally stuck, like he can't think of anything else interesting to do. But if we are engaged and active right from the morning, he's excited about everything we do and often forgets to even ask to play/watch all day. So I don't have to limit the time he spends on it, and we are both happy. He's not bored; I'm not irritated. Win/win.

This is so much more how we work, too. I like getting up and going and accomplishing things, even if it's showering and then sitting around reading. Just makes me feel better mentally and physically all day.

We had TV a little while I showered, when DH WOH'd and DD was still too little to really deal with mama in the shower, and we did Signing Time (limited to once or so a day) but that was all babyhood. Mostly we were tv free back then. Now we do have family movie night (we started this as one holiday the TV was on and we all discovered a love for Mary Poppins and then DD was still napping and staying up so late, and DH and I just needed a break on one day, a weekend day when we'd all been together all day). So for us TV is for when it's too dark to play outside, when we're worn out and want to cuddle up together for something fun. We also do TV if DD or the parent caring for her is sick or injured.

I kind of hate having the TV on too much-- just how it makes me feel headachey and icky and hypnotizes me w/o my meaning to watch, plus of course ads are atrocious. If we had someplace for DD to watch good content on her own, it might be fine, but for now it's limited out of respect for mama being able to function and do fun things

[Greenmama2]

Well we don't limit tv because we don't have one. Not being facetious but we just don't. Haven't since DD was 3 months and that was only one left behind by a friend of DH's who had shared a house with us the previous year. We've never bought one and DD has never asked for one.
We don't limit screentime however. Well usually not, a couple of times DH or I has had a fit about DD "watching television all day" (ridiculous because as I said we don't have one) but we usually come to our senses and solve whatever is going on by negotiation instead
At the moment dvds are self-limiting because the drive on DH's laptop doesn't work properly and my laptop committed suicide this time of year we do a lot of travelling so fixing them hasn't been a priority (DD hasn't been concerned). We still have plenty of screens though - DH's laptop has at least 5 hours of mainly Winnie the Pooh and ballet videos downloaded from youtube, there's the little netbooky thing I'm posting this from and the iPad all of which DD can and does use for whatever as long as DH doesn't need them for work. Today she watched "The Snowman" on youtube and did some Reading Eggs, I expected her to ask to watch something when we got home this evening but funnily enough she hasn't. It does happen . Currently she is on a kick of watching birth videos on youtube with DH when she gets tired in the evening, mostly home/unassisted births but last night she watched an elephant, a cat and two dog births. I have no idea what she is processing through that but it's pretty cool.
Although we don't restrict it I'm only gradually getting comfortable with her having the amount of screentime she does but I must say it's interesting to observe what she uses it for (like the birth stuff). That just leads back to the reason we don't have an actual tv though, you just can't do that when someone else is choosing the content for you.
Miranda as always your ideas are gold. I will have to suggest that to DD next time we are starting to stuggle with it.

[phoebemommy]

We're unschoolish, but we definitely limit TV with our 4 y.o. He's the type who needs limitations and boundaries or else he's kind of miserable and insatiable. When he starts whining and making a scene about "one more" episode, I tell him that shows me he really needs to stop watching, since it's making him act so badly. I really make up and refine the limits as we go along, since our lives are always changing.

Part of our limit is just the culture of our family. We don't have cable and we didn't make the digital switch. We do have DVD's and videos, and we have the Netflix Roku box, which lets us stream some Netflix stuff on demand from the internet to our TV. But it's all on our own time -- we watch when it's a good time for us, and there's no hurry.

I'm also pretty picky about what he watches, since I really don't want our lives filled up with characters like Spongebob and the like. I don't know if I can keep that stuff out forever, but as long as possible, I will. At first I just wanted him watching nature documentaries and live action real life stuff for kids (like "Where the Garbage Goes"), but then I nostalgically picked up a Charlie Brown box set and he got into Charlie Brown. But then he started calling everybody "stupid" (a lot of negativity, it turns out, in Peanuts!), so I cut him off until recently, and am letting him try again. He also is way into Caillou, which is like nails on a chalkboard for me, but his reasons for liking it are way more legit than my reasons for hating it, so he gets to watch it. He also likes Mr. Rogers, the couple of videos we have, but otherwise he's been burned by enough "scary" (to him) movies that he just wants to stick to his few shows for now, which is a good thing, I think.

But I do find it affects our quality of life if an important part of every day is his Caillou fix. So our compromise is that he gets to watch several episodes of his shows, one day on, one day off. That way I can have a day blissfully free of the Caillou theme song, and I don't start to resent it. He's also welcome to watch any grown up stuff we're watching so long as it's not scary, overtly sexual, or violent. Even L.A. Ink, since he loves drawing and he's interested in our tattoos. But we don't watch very much until after he goes to bed anyway.

[amberskyfire]

I had initially decided that we would watch NO videos in our house because my stepdaughter (who does not live with us) was always addicted to leaving the TV on all day long, even when she wasn't watching it. Even to this day at 14, she can't sleep at night without it on all night.

We don't have TV reception in our house, but we do have a DVD player and a TV because the house is rented turnkey and they came with it. I had planned to just unplug it and keep it off, but my daughter had other ideas when she came along.

She is 2 1/2 now and has always been so high needs that she becomes violent if I don't give her my full undivided attention all the time. Playing by herself is rare and it's exhausting for me. I decided after a year and a half that I was going to try short videos so I could get some things done.

I have very strict rules about videos in our house. They cannot be too fast. They cannot have annoying or baby-talking characters. I also do not allow anything commercialized. This means NO Sesame Street, Disney, Spongebob, Dora, etc. I only get videos that are broken up into 10-30 minute episodes. No movies. They are too long for little kids.

I screen videos well before letting my daughter watch them. They must be slow-moving and have good simple English and I prefer videos with real people, not puppets or animated characters in most cases. The videos must be gentle with nicely-behaved characters. No hitting, name-calling, rude behavior, etc. I prefer that they be educational, so we get a lot of documentaries.

We check out one or two videos a week from the library. Our favorites have been children's documentaries about nature, food, farms and animals, Wee Sign (children sing songs while signing), videos about manners and hygiene, and children's instructional dance and music videos which are great because I don't know a thing about playing music.

I also allow a few gentle just-for-fun children's shows such as Miffy (our very favorite!), Scholastic narrated story videos, Old Bear Stories (British), and Kipper (also British).

My other rule is that it can't be on just any time. She cannot watch more than two 30 minute videos per day and she can only watch them if I need to get something done. I usually play one while doing dishes and while cooking dinner - two activities that are too dangerous for her to help me with.

[yllek]

We're not unschoolers here (child-led in many respects, eclectic, and relaxed, but not unschoolers), so our experience may or may not be helpful to you.

We talk to our kids about our concerns with screen time. Not in a judgmental way, but just a frank, "this is not the healthiest activity to choose" sort of way. We've talked about obesity, lack of activity, media addiction, mood disorders, brain development, just the gamut of stuff. But we also talk about film as an art form, awesome animation or investigative reporting. We don't pretend to know everything that's good or bad about electronic media, but we try to put what we do know, what we've heard, what we're concerned about on the table.

We don't have cable, but we do subscribe to Netflix and Discovery Education Streaming. We have some dvds, and we occasionally borrow dvds from the library. We own a Leapfrog Explorer and a few games. We'll youtube a few videos too. Dh and I try to make available video choices that are acceptable to us if the kids should choose them, so no SpongeBob, but we do have some Transformers stuff.

Then we just ask our kids how much time they need to watch, and then we set a timer. Typically, they ask for 10 to 20 minutes.When the timer goes off, they go do something else. Very rarely, they ask to watch a longer video like Star Wars IV or Finding Nemo. Sometimes, I "make" them watch more. Usually, it's a documentary or something for a subject we're studying. (They love documentaries, so it's not like they are hating this choice).

Anyway, this is the balance that we have found in our family.

[rumi]

my approach to media has been similar to my approach to solids - i introduce them when i think they are ready, some later than others. i didnt introduce added-sugar foods till dd was 3 and i could explain to her what role they play in our diet. some children might be ready for this conversation earlier, others later. I didn't introduce screen activities till i could explain, in simple terms at first, that it needs to be limited, and why. So I am not setting specific weekly limts or anything - rather I am trying to help dd understand the philosophy behind why I feel it should be limited. And often days go by when it is not on at all. But if sometime I feel it has been on too long, I have no problem asking my child about it and also proactively trying to make sure we are doing other things.

I would love not to have a TV but others in the family disagree. For now we dont have cable. Anyway similar issues arise with computer.

I agree with laohaire. Though unlike some others we do have the box in the house, it is not a major part of our lifestyle. It also takes effort to do things other than TV and I think it is well worth that effort and definitely part of our holistic learning approach.

Originally Posted by SundayCrepes

Unschooling is a spectrum and there are no unschooling police.

[JuniperBCN]

I've just started limiting after over a year of trying to RU it... I feel like I gave it a really good try and wasn't pleased with how it was affecting us. So now, no screen time til after lunch which is around 3ish here. I'm actually super pleased and the kids (2 and 4) seem to be reacting really well. I felt like screen time was making it impossible to get our days off the ground and they weren't getting to move around in the way their bodies so desperately needed. Our tv area is really small and there isn't room for them to move around a lot while they watch or keep other toys and the computer is at a desk which also limits them. I couldn't really imagine setting up the house any other way because of the small spaces we have to work with.

In the afternoon there are more people around to play with and activities for kids, so I'm leaving it pretty free for them, but offering trips to the park, visits with cousins/friends, community center activities. I'd like to think in the future we'll be able to go back to no limits, for example when someone is old enough to stay home alone

[Keeta]

I just wanted to say how relieved I am to read this thread. While in theory I would love RU to work for our family -so democratic! so ideal! - it did not work out in our family at all the way I thought it would, particularly in regards to TV and food. My DS1 (4) is also insatiable with TV and junk/candy. We tried RU-ing it with media for a year and a half (from age 2 1/2 -4), and my DH and I just got so fed up with fights about "shows" that at the beginning of the summer we lied and told him that the TV was broken. It's been "broken" since then. We unplug it and then if my DH gets up in the middle of the night and wants to watch something, he plugs it in, watches, and unplugs it when he's through. DS knows that there is a TV in our bedroom (not his) and that I watch it at night when I am nursing the baby to sleep. He will occaisionally ask to watch something in the morning when the baby is napping (and the baby is not the kind that will tolerate being left asleep alone - must. have. mom. at. all. times) - and I will allow 1 half hour show previously recorded on the TiVo (that we don't pay for - my parents bought it years ago when you could buy them outright with no subscription). So he'll watch one Curious George or Dinosaur Train and then we turn it off. It's worked really well. It was a real problem to have the TV on in the living room (that's the "broken" one) - it's where we spend most of our day, and when it's not on he actually PLAYS with his toys, reads books, plays dress-up...this was seriously not happening when he could just ask for shows all the time. He would sit at his little table or on the couch and eat (junk mostly) and watch shows. All day.

Really glad to see that there are other people out there that can make unschooling work for their family, without worrrying about the "rules" of RU.

[rumi]

While in theory I would love RU to work for our family -so democratic! so ideal! - it did not work out in our family at all the way I thought it would, particularly in regards to TV and food. My DS1 (4) is also insatiable with TV and junk/candy. We tried RU-ing it with media for a year and a half (from age 2 1/2 -4),

I think there is a widespread misconception about the "R" in RU. wrt to tv /candy / bedtime / chores, I think that guidance in the early years can and will lead to responsibility and independence in the later years and no, this does not mean making the same choices as the adult would make or would like the child to make. It frees the child to make choices, and it frees the adult from judging those choices. But like other responsibilities, not all kids are ready for this at the same age and there is no need to rush it. (kind of like learning to write or read)
I explained a bit of my own approach above.

[scoobymummy]

our approach

A slightly different perspective here - my kids are 7 and 9. My older child has some OCD tendencies so we have really struggled with this issue. One wise mom pointed out that for OCD kids, restricting is difficult, because then they worry about it all the time ... when? how long? I wasn't comfortable with unlimited access though, because visual images seem to really stick with my ds and they go around and around in his head. We considered doing away with it entirely, which we did when he was a toddler, but we wanted to respect his passion for these games and to allow the learning that does take place when he plays them. We experimented with various approaches. What has finally worked is that we have a daily chore list. Once the animals are fed etc. they can have screen time. It works really well, because the worry about when is gone for him because it's immediate and then it's done for the day, and for me, it naturally ends at lunch time, so it's limited to one or two hours a day.

[bookwormommy]

I'm glad to have found this thread.

[greenthumb3]

Our family's take of technology (for now....it might change!)

http://inchwormchronicles.blogspot.c...mason-and.html
Posted via Mobile Device

[JuniperBCN]

I'm coming in again over a month later, mostly to laugh at myself. Haven't abandoned all limits, but have to say that my kids (as I imagine most) are clever.

My four year old asked "why?" in a very sincere way and I explained that I was worried that the screen was sort of trapping them on their way to explore the rest of the world, and that, in the way I think a variety of food is good, I also think a variety of activities is good. So DS comes back later, lists off a variety of ways that he's explored his world and asks to watch something. He adds that he's had a busy morning and wants to relax. What's a mama to do with such reasonableness? So I tried saying yes. And guess what? A few weeks have gone by and he's watching and finishing on his own. There are some days of concentrated viewing and some days where the tv doesn't get turned on until really late. I think I should have just tried talking to DS without being afraid of the tv monster in the first place.... I thought I had, but now I'm wondering