Ep. 82 What's Your Relationship with Screen Time? [Jumpstart Your Year: Day 22]

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the 2024 Jumpstart Your Year series, where we're coming to you every day this January with mini episodes to help you get reflecting on what's working and what's not in your parenting and productivity journey.

Our goal with the series is to create momentum and spark creativity so you can go into the new year with clarity and intention.

On Day 22, Christina reflects on the questions:

How to handle screen time for kids? What do your kids do while you work?

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Transcript

Christina: Hey, I'm Christina, life and business coach, work from home entrepreneur, homeschooling mom, and co host of the Parenting and Productivity by Design podcast. To jumpstart your year, we're coming to you every day this month with mini episodes to get you reflecting on what's working and what's not in your parenting and productivity journey.

Our goal with this series is to create momentum and spark creativity so you can go into the new year with clarity and intention. And today we are going to be delving into, this is one of the questions that I get asked the absolute most as a homeschooling and a work from home mom. And when I was starting my coaching business and I was still running a nonprofit and we've had homeschooled the kids since the beginning, since they were just starting school, but particularly around the pandemic and things when people were shifting and having their kids at home a lot more.

It was how do I handle screen time and what do the kids do while we're getting stuff done. So during the pandemic, we were all working from home. My husband was working full time from home. I was working full time from home. And the kids were home and we homeschooled. So some of that actually wasn't as big of a change because we have always homeschooled that part wasn't as big as a shift as it was for somebody going from having their children in public school at the time or private school and then bringing them home.

But having all of us here all the time was. a big adjustment. But thankfully a lot of the things that we had had in place from when I was working from home and when the kids were here already kind of helped to alleviate a little bit of the friction from that transition. And we are not, I'll just preface this by saying we are not screen free.

We are not against technology. My husband's actually very into technology we've always been interested in movies and they do a lot of gaming and things like that. So we are not screen free by any stretch. However, I do. have ideas about the amount of screen time. And especially because we are because we are here all the time and because the opportunities are available that we could just have screens all the time.

I've been pretty intentional and conscious about the screen time usage in our house. So when they were very young and they were babies, we didn't have them even able to watch anything or interact on screens until they were at least two. And that was just based on research at the time that we had looked into about the impact of screens on on young children and toddlers specifically babies and toddlers.

And then once they did, once they got past that age, we would allow them to watch like parts of movies or things like that kind of breaking them up into little chunks. And incorporated that way, but we've never really been heavy, particularly daytime screen users. And that was just kind of set up as the expectation.

And my philosophy on screens is that I don't set up. I know that there are some families that will set up screen time limits where they're only allowed so, so many minutes per day on screen and that works really well for them. There's some that will just allow any screen time and that's been working fine for them.

I do notice that when. Especially when my kids were younger. And if I was trying to get some extra sleep with the baby and my preschooler would go, my husband would sometimes turn on the TV for him in the morning so that I could get some extra sleep, which was wonderful. But I did start to notice that when he had screens in the morning that.

The rest of our day just kind of fell off the rails. And this might be specific to some kids and may not be as impactful on others, but I did find that the more that we had screens available, the more that they just weren't able to function very well for the rest of the day, or it just made the rest of our day harder.

So that's when we went and kind of eliminated them during the day, almost exclusively. And what I would do, especially when they were younger, is offer other activities and other options for them. And the expectation was just kind of there that we just didn't, we didn't turn on the TVs. We didn't have iPads and things available for them.

So that was never really an issue. But. We have other items for it. And I came across the concept of strewing when it was pretty early on, which is kind of just setting up invitations to play. And those were opportunities for the kids to just have like I would bring something out that I thought they might want to interact with a lot of times, these would be kind of more open ended imaginative type play things sensory type activities.

So having like sensory bins and things like that that they could dig in or create. We also are very open to and I don't always been very open to allowing them to be part of the process of whatever we were doing. So if I was cleaning around the house, like, they could participate and do the unhelpful helping so they were part of the process and involved in it.

And that was something that allowed them to develop independent skills as well as to kind of give them something to do. But when I look at it, I never wanted screen time to be a limited commodity because that made it be like this extra special thing that they were looking forward to, which almost made it at this, like this prize thing that they wanted more than anything else.

And so as they got older, and especially during the pandemic when they did get iPads to be able to FaceTime with friends and family and started to do more interactive things. There's a lot of. Absent options that became available at that point in time that they wanted to interact with. I didn't want that to be the thing that they were looking forward to all the time.

So I felt like if I placed limits on what they were doing within the screens, that that would kind of elevate them to this thing that they, that they just desired and wanted all the time. But I still wanted to maintain boundaries about it. So we don't do screens in the morning. They're able to listen to books and do things like that if they're playing.

So they'll have their iPads where they can have their audio books on, but they're not actually interacting with the screen. We also would crowd in, I would crowd in a lot of other activities. So the things that I wanted them to do, I would crowd those in. And that just naturally did not allow as much time for, you know, the traditional screen time type things.

And we have a pretty open relationship in general, where I don't always say yes to screen time, but I don't always say no either. They don't have to get their stuff done before they have screen time all the time, but typically they do. So we have. Conversations about that and that may be really hard for some families.

It might be easier to just set strong limits. And I think originally we kind of did that but as they got older and we continue to maintain a relationship where it was mutual and there's a lot of mutual respect there, that's. That's worked. We've been able to find a flow that works where they're not constantly asking.

But we just kind of have this ability. So if a friend was only available to chat at a certain time, because they had to go to school or to whatever, that that was okay if they did that before they got their stuff done but then their expectation was they still got their stuff done afterwards. So I wasn't always super strict on that.

But I think that when you're looking at screen times for you, and like what your kids can do while you're working I think it's really easy to set them in front of a screen. Just kind of check in and see how that impacts the rest of your day of your week, like your relationship. Because I think that that's when I saw like the immediate effect of giving them a screen was great.

But then throughout the rest of the day or the next day or things like that, they'd be asking for it again. They'd be wanting it again and there'd be more whining. So looking at what you want and what your values are as a family. We still do movies. The kids will play games. They'll play video games with their friends or with my husband.

They're still able to do certain apps and things. We actually do a little bit of our schoolwork as through apps on the iPad. So we don't. Like, get rid of them completely, but we are just trying to be intentional. And I think the other thing when we look at for screens for kids is that often we'll sit there and say that screens aren't good for kids, but then we ourselves are constantly on screens as well.

So that's something that I'm. Starting to become more conscious of as well as how often I have my phone with me or how often I have a laptop in front of me or a TV on or something like that while I'm doing other things and trying to model the behavior that I want them to engage in. And then what things do you want to do?

Because I think that the more that we can bring in other options for them and allowing them to realize that there are other things to do besides being on the screen. And actually engaging with them in that for a little while, and then you can allow them to kind of do that on their own. But finding some of those things and allowing the kids to be bored, like they can be bored and especially if you're going for a transition where you've had a lot of screens and then cutting it out there's going to be a transition period.

That's just going to be a little bit painful for. for both parties. But having that consistency and just like these are the expectations and being very clear about that is what's really going to get you through that. And then once you get through that transition period, it will be easier on the other side.

I've talked to people that have cutout screens or limited, especially in younger kids. And that initial part is, is not always fun, but it's really only, you know, a week or two weeks or, you know, a little bit. And then. They start to realize that actually their kids can entertain themselves and actually they are more engaging and thoughtful and creative and able to manage their time sometimes better than just constantly needing to be entertained by screens.

So everybody, I think everybody's relationship is going to be different, and I would not advocate for everybody to adapt the same philosophies that we do, but just maybe look at what your philosophies are, if you have them. And if you don't have them if you want to implement them like is this something that you want to look into and think about your technology uses your family technology uses.

Is it something that impacts, or are you just kind of allowing it to kind of come in and not really being any intentional about it? Sometimes that can kind of creep in and start to have effects that we don't think about. Or are you okay with where you are and just like managing that? Because I think that that's a valid, alternative as well. But the biggest thing that I would say that when you're looking at any of your screen time or when you're looking at what you want for kids, like just know that if you're making changes, there's going to be friction and looking at what your goals are for yourself. We don't do a lot of screens because I want them to be able to be creative. I want them to be bored. I want them to be able to entertain themselves. I want them to enjoy going outside, even as they get older. And being able to have those options. And for me, it makes sense. to not have screens as this easy option for them, and so that they can kind of do these other things.

But for other families, you might have different cultures, you might find that there's a lot of great things that that they can do through that and have creative options through screens and technologies as well. We certainly, I think, found a good balance between those. So as you're looking at it, just look at like, what are your philosophies?

What do you want? What would be the reasons why you would add or subtract screen time? What are the activities and options that your kids can do otherwise? And then setting those boundaries with the kids as well. They have other things that they can do, but that doesn't mean that, especially during that friction time, if you're making changes that they wouldn't come and interact, but just kind of setting up consistently like this is this is working time and I'm not available.

We do set, I have like a Being on the door where they know at certain points in time if I'm in a meeting or with a client or doing a recording like this that's, that's, it's kind of like they're, like I would be in the office. I'm just not available at that particular time. And so we have those communication and we have that, that those expectations kind of set up ahead of time.

And I'll usually check in before I engage in something like that and make sure that they're all set now as younger kids, they would kind of play next to my desk and just play quietly or do something like that where they're still in the same room with me, but they do. You know, for the most part have that expectation of being able to be quieter in their times for that.

And then continuing as they get older to kind of raise those expectations on what that might be. So I think that for anybody, you're just going to find your own. What works for you, what works for your family. But it is possible and it is possible to do it without relying on screen. So I think that that's if you are looking to implement something like that, and you're just, you're not sure you know, hit me up on Instagram or on one of the other platforms or respond to the emails and We can talk further about like options and literally what we did and what the age groups are and how we, you know, have come to be able to make it to this point where I think we have a pretty good relationship, both.

With use and with having those boundaries. So if you like this episode, you might also like the village, which is our community and co work space where we offer opportunities for connection, accountability and intention study, and you can check out the link in the show notes for our coming meetups. You can also follow along with us as we go through this month with our daily prompts.

By signing up for our email and the show notes. And if you'd like a more personalized support feel free to reach out for private coaching or respond and get on a email list for upcoming programs and opportunities and other ways that I can help support you as well. So thank you for joining me on this episode of parenting and productivity by design.

And we'll catch you later. Bye.