Mum Comes Up With Simple Solution To Cut Back On Kids’ Screen Time!

If there’s one thing that unites us all as parents it’s our constant struggle in providing balance to our kids with their screen time. During isolation I’m sure we’ve all been more lenient than usual but how do we get things back on track now that life is slowly returning to normal?

If your household is anything like mine at the moment then your TV is on pretty much all day. Between gaming and watching TV it seems like it’s constantly buzzing in the background.

One US mum came up with a simple yet genius solution which she shared on Reddit of how she managed to cut the technology cord from her kids.

“I couldn’t STAND to have my 2.5 yr old son asking to watch TV / Movies not only first thing in the AM, but also throughout the day,” she said. “Tantrums. Begging. I hated it.”

So what did she do to stop the tantrums? Curtains. She literally just hung curtains in front of her television to stop her kids looking at the screen.

“I put up curtains to hide it for out of sight / out of mind,” she shared.

The TV was only revealed in the evenings when the family all sat around together to watch a show. The mum said this made a huge difference to how the kids responded to technology. In fact, she says they hardly missed it and found other activities to fill in their time.

“This weekend he mostly asked to go outside & go to the yard, and even when we DID watch TV, he played with his toys instead of staring at the screen!! YAY!!”

Sharing the TV hack in such a public forum prompted lots of other TV-free parents to come forward and share their experiences.

“Awesome! My 2.5 year old announced that he needed to go play outside today… at 6.30am, literally the moment he was awake,” shared one parent.

Another wrote: “Oatmeal on the front porch it was We don’t have a TV on the main floor, probably never will, and the attitude of ‘we have the TV on 24/7’ is incomprehensible to me. Do whatcha gotta do with TV, I get it, especially right now, you need to work or cook or clean, the only way is the TV for X time, it’s not my place to insist on some mystical utopian zero screen time purity. BUT turning it on first thing in the morning until last thing at night.. no, no, thank you, not in this house.”

While other parents shared tips that seemed to work in their households.

“My son is 4. He’s only allowed to watch tv when it’s dark outside. It doesn’t work when it’s sunny out,” one parent said.

And it seems that people don’t only have a problem with their kids, it’s their partners who need to learn a bit about technology detoxing too. “I wish this worked on my boyfriend as well,” one user wrote. “I asked him so many times to put on music instead. The first thing he does in the morning EVERY day is to turn on tv for our daughter. And it’s on all day long.. I told him plenty of times it should be a ‘reward’ and not an everyday thing, but he doesn’t care much about it. Even when I try to give examples of how creative she has been playing while we visit my mum, that has no tv… It really upset me.”

What do you think of the curtain idea? Wonder if it works for the fridge too!!

Images: Reddit