🤯Have you heard this tip before?
🙌🏻I heard it years ago and it really blew my mind. It’s so simple but if you have a kid who struggles to stop using screens, it can be a game changer.
🤔All kids are different. This might not work for your kid! But in general, both as a parent and an educator, I’ve found it is way easier to delay an anticipated or potentially dysregulating thing, than it is to start with it and try to take it away.
🚗This can be very dependent on the type of travel. When I’m driving in the mountains in winter, I’m more likely to give my child a screen the whole time to ensure I can focus and not be distracted by offering other activities.
🚇On this train ride, a screen wasn’t an option. We had books, sticker books, and our @yotoplay_us mini player (not sponsored). My child didn’t ask for screens because they weren’t presented as an option.
✈️For a flight or other long travel, if you want to allow screens but not for the entire journey, that’s when this tip is very handy. We can start by offering other activities, games, books, etc. and wait until a point when we’re ok with them theoretically using a screen for the remainder of the trip.
😮They may not even choose a screen for the whole time available, but if we offer a screen knowing we are OK with it and not going to try to remove it, then we’re still using boundaries to balance screen time with other things, we’re just doing it in a way that is more manageable for us.
💪🏼This way, instead of starting with screens and trying to remove them part way through a trip (and risking a difficult situation in a tense setting like a plane), we can start with non screens, pivot to screens when it feels like it would be best, and then the end of the journey ends screen time by default, often in an appealing way. My child has never had an issue ending screen time when it meant we were getting off the plane and going somewhere anticipated 😉
🙋🏻♂️I hope you’ll give this a try and see if it works for you!
