Hilltown Families 
Q&A: How Does Your Family Handle Screen Time Limits in the Summer?
QUESTION AND ANSWERS
Anyone else struggling with over consumption of screen time this summer? How do you handle screen time? How do you set limits?
- Barbara Nichols Zaccheo writes: “Poker chips worth 20 minutes. Total of 3 hours/week. He spends them as he wishes- it’s reduced arguing and he’s better at managing his time along with chores and camp prep.”
- Karen Schneyer writes: “We don’t have cable.”
- Mike Avery writes: “Depends on what is being watched. If there is enough exercise then summer screen time can be part of their vacation. I think educational channels should be more tolerated than mind candy shows. Two and a half hours of mind candy is plenty.”
- Nanci Streit-Rohmer writes: “Simply get rid of the TV…we did three years ago and my children’s reading levels soared, our family communication increased… most importantly we are no longer exposing our children to false notions of life (aka Disney, Nickelodeon, etc)… and most of the messages of the shows that kids are exposed to nowadays are wrong… I don’t want my ten year old fawning over Justin Beiber…. I want her reading American Girls, building forts, finding praying mantis in the yard, learning how to grow her own food…”
- Meg Gescheider writes: “We have been dealing with this issue in the past few days so we looked it up and( for what it is worth) according to the American Academy of Pediatrics kids should have no more than 2 hours of screen time per day-may been a helpful guide for some.”
- Stefanie Ansanitis writes: “30 minutes of reading equals 30 minutes of video games this summer. My 7 year old can get carried away with Mindcraft so I’m there to bring him back to reality.”
- Steve Damon writes: “We don’t have a T.V.”
- Adrianne Kunz writes: “My 2 year old hasn’t watched T.V. in 4 months. He goes outside.”
- Linda Taylor writes: “Good luck. Always a challenge unless you live off the grid in Wyoming. Might need to have limited electricity times.”
- Pauline Delton writes: “Mine is old enough to have a little sense of time. Since we were sometimes finding it hard to get out of the house for things, but his favorite screen time was upon waking, we settled on an end time (8am, 10am, etc, whatever works for your family), and unless we have something else planned earlier he is almost guaranteed screen availability up to that time. I promised I would try not to schedule things any earlier than 1 hour before the regular end time. Then, depending on our day, there may or may not be more. And sometimes he doesn’t go *right* to a screen when he wakes up. I’d rather not limit because he learns a ton from what he does, but when I noticed it interferes with other things, affects his mood and risks meaning little-to-no physical activity. I have felt fine coming up with this agreement.”
[Photo credit: (ccl) Jeremy Hiebert]
We have a screen time limit (30 min/day), but my children (10 and 16) were having trouble sticking to it, especially with Ipods and Netbooks. (We’ve never had TV, though now we have Netflix, which is close enough!) I was tired of being the time monitor, so I removed the WiFi device. Now, if they want screen time, they have to use the centrally located desktop computer in order to access the internet.
I am so much happier now without the WiFi!