Our role as parents is to support our children to learn to manage technology and not for technology to rule our child’s lives. However, millions of dollars have been spend in ensuring that technology is the most attractive and alluring to our brains. For children who have ADHD, the attraction is more seductive as it provides the stimulation their brains crave.
If you’re been driven crazy by the amount of screen time they want, here are seven tips to help you tackle the amount of hours they are using.
- Think about what your child is doing when on screens.
- U tube – is this replacing TV screen watching?
- Gaming – Is your child socialising with friends while gaming?
- Researching – is your child using technology to explore activities, research topics of interest or find way of doing things?
- Watching a movie with siblings or family is a shared experience.
- Decide how many hours of screen time your child is allowed.
- What is the total acceptable time you can live with? (Remember that in a typical school day, PS children use screens 2/3 hours a day and HS children use screen 5/6 hours a day.)
- Collaborate with teens to agree a daily screen time allowance and monitor this together.
- Break down the total time into blocks that accommodate the wider family.
- Mange the blocks of time to fit in with your work/activities where you need time where you know they are occupied e.g. getting your work done, cooking dinner or time for yourself.
- Shared devices will need a rota with agreed time period for individuals.
- Monitor your child’s mood after periods of technology.
- You may find that some children become very agitated or aggressive after longer blocks of time on screens. This may be the game/activity but also maybe the length of time. Young children benefit from taking breaks every 30/45 minutes.
- Use this powerful motivation to support your child do less attractive activities.
- Children with ADHD are motivated by the receipt of instant rewards. Screen time is a reward that will motivate most to do the unpleasant tasks. Link the block of time to clearly set out daily expectations that you consider necessary for you all to live in harmony.
- Teach your child with ADHD the impact of consequences by linking his behaviour to a consequence.
- Let you child know what is the consequence of sticking to agreements around technology. If you have linked a reward to an activity, there will be a natural consequence i.e. if you don’t do Task A, block of time X is not earned. If your child argues or ignores you when the block of time is up, link the consequence to loss of time in the next block (say 15 minutes).
- Keep perspective and try not to fight over screen use.
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- If you find that you are arguing and fighting with your children over their screen time, stop and try to empathise with where your child is coming from. Many children are finding this new way of living very challenging and are missing their friends. The screen may be their way of coping. Take a deep breath and remember, tomorrow’s another day.
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If you would like to talk further or would like some support to implement these ideas, please “Get in Touch”.
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