My boys are 10 and 7. Like some others have posted, the last few months, I've been dealing with pregnancy nausea and general low-energy, so they had free reign on screen time. In the last month I've been feeling better and we've gone back to our normal routine...
which is - they can each watch two episodes or one movie a day on the computer. Like most of you, we also don't have any reception on our TV, it's just a tiny one with the DVD player built in, so that's all it's used for is playing our skimpy collection of DVD's (which they are allowed to watch whenever, but neither child is a big fan of watching the same thing over and over, so they rarely pull those out - they do get netflix, one new movie about once a week, so they watch that whenever they feel like it, too).
The boys are watching episodes mostly on netflix, sometimes hulu, sometimes they'll find full episodes on youtube of things they want to watch, which for my older son is usually anime, my younger son watches mostly pokemon via the cartoon network website. On all the websites besides netflix there are one or two commercials, which annoy the hell out of me, but I get nice reminders when we stay at hotels how many terrible commercials *actual* TV has, and don't think online is so bad
My kids usually watch their episodes in the morning, because they wake up so early and I prefer to laze around in bed for a bit and not be bothered
They also have Nintendo DS's (little portable nintendo's for those with kids too little to have been subjected to this silliness yet
They can play those 2 days a week, and pick the days they play. They have their own calendar with all their activities, including any trips we take, etc. So, usually they'll schedule DS days on a day we'll be doing a lot of driving or a day they have nothing else planned, etc. That's interesting that one mama PP said they only do screen time and video games on the weekends - that's when we're out and about hiking and stuff - my kids would be ticked off to have that be their screen day and then not get to have much screen time
Our experiments with unlimited screen time have been mixed. They don't go overboard on watching shows, so no problems there (that's basically limited because I work online, so it was getting old to have arguments that they wanted to watch shows vs. I need to make money!).
Playing the DS is another story! They were getting really cranky and rude and generally lost all imaginitive play - it was really sad! Since we went back to limited video game days, there's been actual playing REAL games, pretending things, building forts & lego sculptures, it's nice to see my kids act like kids again
which is - they can each watch two episodes or one movie a day on the computer. Like most of you, we also don't have any reception on our TV, it's just a tiny one with the DVD player built in, so that's all it's used for is playing our skimpy collection of DVD's (which they are allowed to watch whenever, but neither child is a big fan of watching the same thing over and over, so they rarely pull those out - they do get netflix, one new movie about once a week, so they watch that whenever they feel like it, too).
The boys are watching episodes mostly on netflix, sometimes hulu, sometimes they'll find full episodes on youtube of things they want to watch, which for my older son is usually anime, my younger son watches mostly pokemon via the cartoon network website. On all the websites besides netflix there are one or two commercials, which annoy the hell out of me, but I get nice reminders when we stay at hotels how many terrible commercials *actual* TV has, and don't think online is so bad
My kids usually watch their episodes in the morning, because they wake up so early and I prefer to laze around in bed for a bit and not be bothered
They also have Nintendo DS's (little portable nintendo's for those with kids too little to have been subjected to this silliness yet
They can play those 2 days a week, and pick the days they play. They have their own calendar with all their activities, including any trips we take, etc. So, usually they'll schedule DS days on a day we'll be doing a lot of driving or a day they have nothing else planned, etc. That's interesting that one mama PP said they only do screen time and video games on the weekends - that's when we're out and about hiking and stuff - my kids would be ticked off to have that be their screen day and then not get to have much screen time Our experiments with unlimited screen time have been mixed. They don't go overboard on watching shows, so no problems there (that's basically limited because I work online, so it was getting old to have arguments that they wanted to watch shows vs. I need to make money!).
Playing the DS is another story! They were getting really cranky and rude and generally lost all imaginitive play - it was really sad! Since we went back to limited video game days, there's been actual playing REAL games, pretending things, building forts & lego sculptures, it's nice to see my kids act like kids again
