Depending on your neck of the woods, your kids are already back to school or preparing for back to school. But the battle over screen time is perennial. We want to see our kids flourish and open their minds and all that good jazz. But left to their own devices (pun intended), kids are not going to give themselves a good digital diet.
Use the pull of screens to your kids’ advantage
You don’t know this yet but you have it in you to be a screen time Judoka. What’s a Judoka? A Judoka is an expert in the martial art of Judo. Judo’s basic principle is to train you to use the strength of your opponent to your advantage. This promise is super comforting isn’t it? Regardless of how puny you are, you can learn to beat any opponent, no matter how big and scary. Now if you’ve ever had to wrench a child away from a screen, you know the pull of screens on kids (and adults too!) is a difficult opponent. So this week, we’re going to learn a little bit about how we can use the strength of the pull of screens to our kids’ advantage- and ours too.
Make screen time submit to your kids needs – and not the other way round
Just think about it. If you left kids to choose and make their own meals, how much useless stuff would they consume? When it comes to screen time, it’s not uncommon for grownups to yield to letting the kids have their way. Adulting is hard and sometimes it feels like the fight is just not worth it. But while we don’t witness it as starkly, what kids then do is the digital equivalent of eating candy and sugar for every meal. Yeesh! So it’s worth figuring out how to let them be on the screen, but making the screen time submit to what the kids actually need.
Use the lure of screen time to take away the sting of helpful things kids don’t want to do
No one ever became a Judoka overnight – and the same goes for screen time Judoka. But there’s something you can learn now and start applying easily. Like they say, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. The Judoka move is that instead of you forcing the helpful activity on the child, set them up to choose it themselves because you understand the pull of screens on them.
Here are two prime situations when you give kids a choice they can’t refuse.
Screen time is great for kids practicing literacy, math and problem solving skills
When it comes to creating a sense of purpose or competition, nothing can hold a candle to screens. So use that desire most of us have to be challenged and then achieve mastery over something, to get your kids to practice skills they need. The way to do this easily and conveniently is through educational games.
You can ask a kid to read off sentences and they’ll act like you’ve sentenced them to death. But have those same sentences pop up in a game that the child needs to progress, and all of a sudden they are thanking you for entertaining them.
The tip is to allow kids some amount of time to do whatever nonsense games they may choose to play on their own. But then, require that beyond some amount of time, if they are going to be playing games, it has to be certain games with a productive point. We have recommended many educational games as part of the gem of the week – pick any.
The Judoka move you can be happy with is that at least some of the time, your kid will choose to play these educational games over not having screen time at all. They may even fall in love with those games and play them all the time! You have never seen a kid learn to read or count as quickly as when they are motivated to get a high score in a game.
Screen time is great for kids learning a new language
With language acquisition, it is all about practice. But unless you have magic children, kids want to fall back into the language they are most comfortable with. So here is the Judoka move. Decree for instance, that beyond 2 hours of screen time, if they want to keep doing screen time, they have to switch to the language they are learning. Often, given the choice between no additional screen time or additional screen time in another language, they’ll make that choice for the screen. They may be grumpy but at least they’ll be practicing the language. 🙂
