How Do I Handle Screen Time With My Kids?

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good inside. Today's episode is all about screen time. I received so many questions about screen time and many of them included kind of a directed, pointed question asking me, Dr. Becky, how many hours of screen time is okay for my child? I had a really hard time answering this question. And the reason is because there's so many elements that go into this decision and I don't know all the information and all of our families are different. Our kids are different, the number of kids we have are different, how much we need screen time in a moment to recharge and be the parent we want to be. These are all important factors. And so I don't think I can come out and give a specific number. What I do feel I can do is that I think together we can think about what's really happening during screen time and we can think about what comes up for our kids, what comes up for us, and use that knowledge to make decisions that feel right in our specific family. So with that in mind, let's jump into some questions. Our first caller is Cameron from Washington D.C. and she has a question about her four year old and six year old.

Hi, Dr. Becky, my name is Cameron. I have a four year old and a six year old, they're both boys and I'm calling from Washington D.C. so here's my question. My kids don't really watch any TV shows that have a lot of violence. They really only watch shows and play games on their iPads that are, you know, pleasant or even slightly educational. But my husband and I have noticed that the more iPad or screen time they have in a week, the worse their behavior is. And this is totally seems to be regardless of the content. They have more tantrums, they lose it way more often. They hit each other sometimes. I'm curious what you think, Is this a thing? Do you see that more screen time, regardless of what it is, leads to more tantrums and aggression in kids. I'd really love your take. Thanks so much.

Hi Cameron, thanks so much for calling in with this really poignant question. So, yes, I think this is a thing in terms of more screen time leading to more dysregulated behavior. And here's why. And let me say right off the bat that before I even answer that question, I give my kids screen time, right? So this is not an argument against screen time at all. This is a us together trying to understand this relationship and then kind of make decisions that make sense for our family. So what's happening when our kids are watching an iPad? Right? I think we see them kind of probably quiet and sitting and they allow us to finally do something we need to do. And what's happening in their body, I think, is this. Their bodies are experiencing pure enjoyment and satisfaction without them having to expend any, any energy or any amount of trying. Now, I know I hear myself say that and I say, yeah, that's why I use my phone too. It's very enjoyable. And yet for our younger kids, what's happening is they're developing circuitry. They're kind of developing expectations of what things are supposed to feel like. So the more our kids learn that their enjoyment and kind of almost successful comes from no energy expenditure, no frustration tolerance. It's almost as if we're lowering their ability to tolerate frustration when they're actually learning various skills in the world. And learning skills is really hard. And kids whole life is learning skills, right? They're learning how to regulate emotions. They're learning how to wait for something. They're learning how to share. They're learning how to be disappointed, they're learning how to feel jeal. All of those things require so much energy. And the more time our kids spend in a. Huh, this is easy. I don't have to do anything, Circuit. They're understandably a little less tolerant of the. This feels really hard, circuit. So I think that's why you see that the more time your kids have on an iPad, even watching something seemingly educational, the lower their frustration tolerance is. So now this makes me think, well, what do I do with this information? What am I gonna do with this? So I think just knowing this is powerful because it gives us a wider lens to understand screen time. Second, I think we can prepare our kids for the shift from screen time to non screen time by actually explaining this. I don't think we explain this as often as we should to our kids. Something like this, hey, we're gonna end our iPads in a few minutes, I know it will be hard to end. And here's the other thing. Ooh, let's get our body ready for something that might feel a little harder because after this, I know you and your brother might want to play with blocks and ooh, towers might fall and you might have to negotiate what you're going to build and you might disagree and ooh, all of that feels so tricky inside of our body. I'm going to take a deep breath for all of us. After all, we're coming from screen time, which feels so, so easy in our body, right? And just there you're prepping your kids for this switch. Cameron, I want to share one more idea with you and it's something I think about a lot because in those moments when I want to just give my kids the iPad and say, ugh, go take it and I need to kind of take a break, one of the things that inspires me is I think about the kind of more long term, the kind of fast forwarded version of what I'm really working toward. And by the time my kids are in school and they're learning how to read, how to write, how to spell, how to write longer stories, how to do more difficult math problems, I remind myself I want my kids to have experience being in a circuit where they know how to be challenged. They know that frustration goes hand in hand with learning, right? And these academic skills that are so important for our kids, it's not just pure academics that lead to our kids success in school. So much of it is this emotional piece of, of how ready are our kids to face difficulty or how much do our kids expect to have immediate success and rewards as what's often given to them in screen time or in video games, right? In video games there's constant rewards for kind of this mindless engagement. And I think we all know that the rewards when you're learning to read, they take much longer, right? They're not immediately given to us with music and kind of a sticker. And so again, to me, this can be used not to kind of drown in, oh no, I'm such a bad parent, I do too much screen time. But to take a deep breath and say yes, I can tolerate my kids pushing back. I know why I'm saying no to screen time in this one instant and I can hold on to all the reasons this is really going to be good for my child. Our next caller is Sean from Australia who's calling about her four and a half year old and her two year old twins.

Hi, Dr. Becky, this is Sian. I'm calling from Australia. I have a four and a half year old and two year old twins or boys. And my question is about how to monitor your oldest child when you have so much else going on, especially having twins that needs my time and attention so much more. You posted about screen time and how we manage it. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that often I don't notice that my son's just walked off and turned the TV on because I'm so busy doing other things. And also I find sometimes he just ignores instructions because he knows I'm distracted and busy. So I won't go and check up that he's actually done it. So this is a real struggle for me. How do I help him to follow the instructions and actually follow through with what I've asked if he knows that I'm not there to check up that he's actually done it because I'm so busy doing other things.

Hi, Sean. You know, the first thing that comes to mind for me when I listen to you talk is truly what a warrior parent you are. Twins, a 4 year old, that is so much. So I think it's good to just start by reminding yourself of that. That I'm doing so much parenting is so hard. I have three kids who probably all need so much from me and to kind of go into the discussion with that in mind. So after that, what comes to mind for me is to think about your authority in this situation. Right. I think almost I need to say out loud for myself sometimes I'm the parent and I'm in charge. Like it's really kind of nice to say that. Like maybe you can just say that right now. I'm the parent and I'm in charge and I'm big on kind of connection with our kids and validating their experience. That doesn't mean we're not in charge. Right. So it's your decision how much screen time your child gets. It happens to be your child's kind of decision how they feel about that. Right. That's definitely not our domain, but it's your choice. Now the next thing is we have to set our kids up for success around our choices. Right. So if I told my child on a weekend, yeah, we're not gonna have any more candy today, I wouldn't then walk my kid into a candy store and turn my back. Right. That's just asking a lot. I mean, frankly, that would be asking a lot for me if I told myself I Wasn't gonna have candy to go into a candy store. Right. It doesn't mean anyone's bad or doesn't have willpower. It just means we're not going to expect our kids to make decisions that are somewhat impossible. Right. So you're the authority. You get to decide how much screen time your child has. Then we wanna set him up for success. So what does that mean? Put the remote somewhere your child cannot reach. Put the iPad in some locked cabinet. Right. This doesn't mean we don't trust our kids. It means that screens are so hard to resist. They are designed to capture our attention and take away our active decision making. And I think all of us know that screens do this for us and so it definitely does this for our kids. So when you're thinking about these times you're with your twins, I would remind yourself, I'm in charge. I'm allowed to say, there's no screen time for my child. Next, where's the remote? I'm going to put that away. Where are the iPads? Where are the phones? I am also going to put that out of reach. So now I don't expect your child to say to you, wow, mom, thanks for helping me make such good decisions. No, if your child's like my child, he'll say, oh, I don't get to watch screen time. You're with my siblings and there's nothing for me to do. This brings up a next important point. I don't think we can really ever have a discussion about screen time without simultaneously talking about independent play. They really go hand in hand because if our kid is limited in their independent play skills, we are going to become more and more reliant on screen time. Also, the more reliant we are on screen time, the more we get in our kids way of developing independent play skills. And you can see how that cycle could continue. A couple things to me are important when we think about independent play. Number one, boredom is good for kids. I'm not saying that because I like inflicting pain on my own children. I promise you I do not. But boredom is where we create. Boredom is where we try new things. Boredom is where a child thinks there's nothing for me to do. I wonder what would happen if I took all those books and, I don't know, kind of created a railroad with them. Never thought to do that before. I'm so bored. I guess I might try that. That's great. And we deprive our kids of boredom often because it's so hard for us to tolerate them being angry with us. So remind yourself that my kid can be angry, my kid can be bored. Next, we want to set our kid up to be successful in independent play. And I think there's a couple key factors to do that. Number one, remind yourself that you need to start small. Parents who think my kid can't even play independently for two minutes, you know what? Then they need to start with 30 seconds. And 30 seconds in a room with three kind of open ended play items that you know, they like. A couple trucks maybe or some coloring materials. And tell your child they're gonna have some time to play by themself and explain why I would say this explicitly. Learning how to play and create on your own is a really important life skill. And one of my jobs is to help you develop important life skills. And I'm gonna help you develop this skill. We're gonna start very small. I'm gonna give you some items in your room, and I'm gonna set a timer. And when it goes off, you could be done or you could keep going. Now set the timer for something so small, 20 seconds, just so you can come in and kind of say a version of, wow, awesome job. So cool. I'm so curious what you thought to do or curious what you will do next time. So much creativity you have inside of you. And then maybe the next time is a minute, then maybe two minutes. So to kind of summarize that you're in charge, you get to make the decisions, set your child up to not be able to violate your boundaries, and let's start building his independent play skills. Sean, here's one more idea. My guess is that it's hard for your four and a half year old to have twin younger siblings. Now, I don't think that means anyone did anything wrong. My guess is it's just kind of tricky to have two siblings who are younger and need so much from a parent. And my guess is that it would be important to approach your child when things are calm, not in kind of a difficult moment when no one's in trouble and just say something like that to him, huh? Can be hard to have younger siblings, huh? Or do you ever feel like your younger siblings take so much of mommy's attention that sometimes you want my attention and I can't quite give it to you because they need me too? Or maybe do you ever feel like you wish there were three mommies? One for you, one for your brother, one for your sister? I get that. We want to help your child feel seen. So when those Moments come up where he might reach for a remote. He knows that you kind of acknowledge and have already validated the feelings he's having. Let's hear from our last caller, Kim, who has a question about her six year old and eight year old.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Kim. I have a six year old and an eight year old and I was wondering how to set appropriate time limits on iPad use. When the iPads are around, they use them and watch shows and play games after school. But because of COVID and limited activities and cold weather, they live in Canada. They end up spending just a lot of time on them and I don't know how to stop or limit it. I set time limits and they ask for more. I'm busy cooking dinner or finally putting my feet up to relax and then I just, I press add more time. Please help me, point me in the direction of figuring out how to manage this. Thank you so, so, so much.

Hi Kim, thanks so much for calling in with this question. So here's what I start thinking about when I heard you talking. Screen time is designed to never feel like enough. This is something I talk with my kids about and I recommend you do this as well. It's really important to have that kind of understanding as a kid and I think it's really important to have that understanding as an adult because I think we have kind of a hope that we're gonna give our kids some screen time limit and at the end, if we kind of do it right, they're gonna say, oh, okay, I'll put it all away. Thanks for letting me have this amount of screen time. Right. What's much more realistic is just helping our kids be prepared for the not enough feeling that is inevitably going to come at the end of screen time. Not because our kids aren't grateful, but because screen time is designed to make you want more. So here's how you might have that conversation with your child. You might sit your child down and say, hey, I want to talk about something that's really interesting about screen time. Don't worry, you're not in trouble. And this is not even about limits. I just want to talk about something really interesting. Do you know that screens for anyone, adults and kids, never feel like enough. Here's kind of what never enough is like, imagine a jar and you're pouring water into it and it has a hole in the bottom and you pour it up really, really quickly and it's full. And then you stop pouring into it. What would happen, right? And your kiddo's like, well, probably leak out the bottom. Yes, that's what screen time is like. No matter how much we put in, it's never gonna feel full to you. It's always gonna feel like you want more. Just like a jar would if you were trying to fill it up, but it had a hole at the bottom. That's one of the reasons why things always feel tricky when we end and you always ask for more time. This is a very non shaming and respectful way of talking about screen time. And it also gets your children emotionally prepared and emotionally prepared for the inevitable pushback. When we give screen time for our kids, our goal can't be, I don't want pushback. If we're giving screen time, we have to be ready for the pushback at the end. And then we can prepare ourselves and our kids to handle those emotions, but we can't entirely get rid of them because again, they're kind of just part of the screen time process. And here lies kind of an ultimate irony about feelings and regulation in our kids. The more we expect and allow hard feelings, the more we set up our kids to be able to regulate those feelings when they come. Which means, of course, that, say, the feeling of disappointment around screen time ending, it's still there, but it won't look as intense on the surface. When we accept that screen time ending is really hard on our kids, we can then empathize and even help our kids prepare for that moment. And this ends up leading to less frequent and less severe meltdowns. Let's turn all of this into a strategy. I call this emotional vaccination, which means getting your kid prepared for something that's going to be emotionally hard. This strategy pairs really well with being very specific about what's to come. So. So our kids aren't overwhelmed by a sense of surprise. Clarity is key around screen time as our kids are already primed to feel disappointment. So we want to, as much as possible, avoid any added element of confusion or a gap in expectations. I'll model how this would sound, being direct and specific and combining that with emotional vaccination. All right, we're going to have screen time. Now. You can watch two shows, right? And here's where you have to be so specific. I think two shows means one show and then another. And even if your sibling isn't done with her show, your two shows will be over. I just want to make sure we're on the same page about that. To be super, super specific, does two show mean an hour or does it mean two shows? That are 28 minutes. And when it's done, it's done. So I would definitely be specific to set expectations. But then I would do this. I know. It's so hard to end screen time and it's never gonna feel like enough. Like we talked about, you know, one of the things we could do. Let's get out some of those feelings together now. Now, to me, what we wanna be careful about is being playful but not using mockery, right? So that's an important difference. So to me, playfulness would sound like this. Let's get some of those feelings out now. Oh, Mom, I just wanna watch one more show. Please, one more. I promise if you watch one more show, it will feel like enough and my friends will get more screen time. And you never let me do it. Oh, it's no fair. And I would be doing that all myself. I might even drop to the floor. And again, doing it in a way that's connected and playful with my child not making fun of my child. What does this do? Well, it actually changes the feeling by the time the feeling comes up at the end of screen time. Because instead of the feeling being surprising, which is one of the elements of dysregulation, our child is not only ready for the feeling, but has actually infused some understanding, some. Some playfulness and some connection with me. So it's actually changed the feeling because we've surrounded it with those elements that actually help with regulation. There's not really one right way. There's not one right way to give screen time, one right way to determine limits. I think we wanna be clear. We wanna establish that it'll never feel like enough. And then we can even add in that kind of pre meltdown. We can get into that post screen time feeling together with our child before screen time, so that when it comes, it's a little more neutralized by what we've done beforehand. Kim, I want to add one more quick thought that I think will be helpful for you in holding your boundaries around screen time. I always find it useful to say to myself, I only have to convince myself about this decision. I don't have to convince my kids that ending screen time is actually the right decision. That's my decision. And reminding myself that the only kind of approval I need is my own helps me tolerate their pushback. So I think I would use that self talk. And the way you can kind of represent that to them is by saying something like this, Screen time is over. One of my jobs as your parent is to make decisions that I think are good for you, even if you don't like those decisions. So here we are. I'm making one of those decisions. You're not liking that decision. I actually totally understand that you're allowed to be upset. We will get through this, right? And we're really being clear about what my job is, what my kid's job is. And that will help you, I think, feel like a sturdier leader in those difficult moments. Let's tie this all together with three main takeaways. First, remember that kids have feelings about ending screen time. This makes sense and it isn't a sign of a lack of gratitude. So rather than trying to convince your child why she shouldn't have a hard time, prepare your child for the feelings that come up when screen time is over. Second, talk to your kids about the not enough feeling that they have at the end of screen time. Use a metaphor of pouring into a jar that has a hole in the bottom or some other visual that might resonate with your child. Third, consider working on your child's independent play skills. Start short, very short, so you can facilitate a feeling of capability as your child develops the skill. Thanks for listening to Good Inside. Let's stay connected@goodinside.com you can sign up for workshops and subscribe to Good Insider, my weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox. And for more ideas and tips, check out my Instagram Dr. Beckyudinside. Good inside is produced by Beth Rowe and Brad Gage and executive produced by Erica Belsky and me, Dr. Becky please rate and review our show. Let us know what you think and what resonated. I actually do read each and every review so so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.