As a parent, you won’t want your child to spend all their free time staring at screens. It makes it harder for them to be active and to live a well-rounded life, which is no doubt what you want for them. So how can you get them to stop using their phones, computers and TVs so much? And what can replace those things in a way that’ll be appealing to them? That’s what we’re going to talk about today so read on.
Discuss it With Them and Set Goals
First of all, you should make sure that you discuss it openly with your kids. By doing so you’ll be able to make sure that they understand what’s happening and what they need to do differently. Of course, it should be done in a fun way rather than a strict way. Set goals, plan activities together and make it something that’s appealing to them rather than daunting.
Be More Communicative and Engaged
Being more communicative and engaged with your child is important because when you do that, you’ll have deeper and more meaningful conversations with your kids, and you’ll encourage them to communicate their thoughts and feelings more too. That’s definitely healthy for them and it’ll take their attention away from screens for a while too.
Create Some Screen-Free Spaces in the Home
You should create some spaces in your home where you simply don’t use devices or screens. For example, you could make their bedroom space for play and for sleeping and not somewhere where they’re allowed to watch TV or play video games. The same should be true in the dining room where the family eats meals together at the start and end of the day.
Encourage Them to Learn Something Active and Outdoors
Another idea is to encourage them to learn something that gets them up over the sofa and out of the house. They could learn how to skateboard or how to play a new team sport. There are so many things they could do and the process of learning it from scratch should really engage them. It could be something you teach them or something that they do with outside help.
Be Realistic Too
Finally, you need to make sure that you’re always being realistic about the changes you’re looking to implement. You don’t want to make things too strict or too much of a stark departure from the way things are now because when you do that, you make the whole thing less appealing to your child and too difficult for you to implement, and that’ll mean the whole thing will likely fail.
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to reduce the amount of time your kids spend staring at screens. There’s nothing wrong with letting them have fun and enjoy visual content to some extent, but you don’t want it to be something that takes up all of their free time at the expense of other things.
*Collaborative post*
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