Screen time

My kids do chores to earn 5 minutes to one hour of screen time. They get to "spend" their minutes as long as their homework is done and we ok it.

I'm a little further along the journey of parenthood than many of those replying, but hopefully you find some value in this. I have two daughters, the youngest one just started her 1st year in college in August and the other is a junior in college.

One way we addressed screen time was a ticket system. Every week each kid received 7 tickets each worth 30 min of screen time (TV, iPad, etc.). It was up to them to budget these tickets appropriately. If they ran out of tickets during the week, then no more screen time. If they had tickets left over at the end of the week, then they received $0.50 each.

This system has several benefits:
1) The kids learned to budget - now that my daughters are older, this helped in the way they budget their money and other resources,
2) It removes you as the parent from always having to say yes or no. The kids had the tickets and so far they stayed within their budget, it was up to them. The interaction usually was, "Can I watch TV (or use the iPad, computer, etc.)?" "Do you have tickets?" Depending on their answer, they knew what our answer would be.
3) It set an upper limit on how much screen time they would have each week. This was the goal in the first place and made it easy to be consistently meeting the goal.

Of course, there were times around the holidays or other special times, where we would give a little on this, but not often. We had the kids sign a contract - I know, it sounds a bit formal - but this also made it clear what was expected of them - and us. I attached a picture of the contract to this post if anyone is interested. I feel this was one of the best things we did on teaching them to budget and just setting a constraint and then giving them the freedom to live within as they wished. We used it with them from the ages of 6 & 4 to about 10 & 8. By that time, they were busy enough with other activities that the system was not needed anymore.

The 2nd way we addressed this, and my wife was not always happy with this, but she agreed to it, once a month we did a screen free weekend day - a Saturday or Sunday. This meant no screen time at all - no TV, computer, iPad, iPhone, etc for both adults and kids. We would hear some whining about this when it approached, but it forced them to figure out what to do when bored. During the day, we got outside, and during the evening we went for a walk around the neighborhood or read a book or played cards or a board game or did an art project.

Although all these electronic devices provide access to so much information about the world, it also takes discipline for both kids and adults to step away from the screen. When I was growing up, TV stations signed off at night, now you can watch cable channels 24/7, you probably have a DVR, there is NetFlix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and on and on. I think of when we read the Little House on the Prairie books to our daughters when they were young. Back then, when it got dark, other then sit around the fire and read a book or listen to Pa play his fiddle, it was pretty obvious it was time for bed. Today, in the 24/7 access to media, you have to disconnect and go to bed.

Again, hope this is useful to someone and good luck. I've always thought, to re-use an old US Army ad slogan, "Parenting is the toughest job you'll ever love"

I'm a little further along the journey of parenthood than many of those replying, but hopefully you find some value in this. I have two daughters, the youngest one just started her 1st year in college in August and the other is a junior in college.

One way we addressed screen time was a ticket system. Every week each kid received 7 tickets each worth 30 min of screen time (TV, iPad, etc.). It was up to them to budget these tickets appropriately. If they ran out of tickets during the week, then no more screen time. If they had tickets left over at the end of the week, then they received $0.50 each.

This system has several benefits:
1) The kids learned to budget - now that my daughters are older, this helped in the way they budget their money and other resources,
2) It removes you as the parent from always having to say yes or no. The kids had the tickets and so far they stayed within their budget, it was up to them. The interaction usually was, "Can I watch TV (or use the iPad, computer, etc.)?" "Do you have tickets?" Depending on their answer, they knew what our answer would be.
3) It set an upper limit on how much screen time they would have each week. This was the goal in the first place and made it easy to be consistently meeting the goal.

Of course, there were times around the holidays or other special times, where we would give a little on this, but not often. We had the kids sign a contract - I know, it sounds a bit formal - but this also made it clear what was expected of them - and us. I attached a picture of the contract to this post if anyone is interested. I feel this was one of the best things we did on teaching them to budget and just setting a constraint and then giving them the freedom to live within as they wished. We used it with them from the ages of 6 & 4 to about 10 & 8. By that time, they were busy enough with other activities that the system was not needed anymore.

The 2nd way we addressed this, and my wife was not always happy with this, but she agreed to it, once a month we did a screen free weekend day - a Saturday or Sunday. This meant no screen time at all - no TV, computer, iPad, iPhone, etc for both adults and kids. We would hear some whining about this when it approached, but it forced them to figure out what to do when bored. During the day, we got outside, and during the evening we went for a walk around the neighborhood or read a book or played cards or a board game or did an art project.

Although all these electronic devices provide access to so much information about the world, it also takes discipline for both kids and adults to step away from the screen. When I was growing up, TV stations signed off at night, now you can watch cable channels 24/7, you probably have a DVR, there is NetFlix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and on and on. I think of when we read the Little House on the Prairie books to our daughters when they were young. Back then, when it got dark, other then sit around the fire and read a book or listen to Pa play his fiddle, it was pretty obvious it was time for bed. Today, in the 24/7 access to media, you have to disconnect and go to bed.

Again, hope this is useful to someone and good luck. I've always thought, to re-use an old US Army ad slogan, "Parenting is the toughest job you'll ever love"

We have a Kindle Fire which has some parental options on it. My son is 6 years old and a very active reader. He has to read for one hour before allowed one hour of free-time. He usually likes to play MineCraft during that time. It's a somewhat educational game. If he wants to play anything after that we try to keep educational games stocked for that time period. They had a lot of great aps like light-bot which help kids learn programing/problem solving skills. Endless learning is a fantastic suite as well. They have the alphabet, vocabulary words, numbers, math, and Spanish!

My kids do chores to earn 5 minutes to one hour of screen time. They get to "spend" their minutes as long as their homework is done and we ok it.

We have a Kindle Fire which has some parental options on it. My son is 6 years old and a very active reader. He has to read for one hour before allowed one hour of free-time. He usually likes to play MineCraft during that time. It's a somewhat educational game. If he wants to play anything after that we try to keep educational games stocked for that time period. They had a lot of great aps like light-bot which help kids learn programing/problem solving skills. Endless learning is a fantastic suite as well. They have the alphabet, vocabulary words, numbers, math, and Spanish!