Creative Systems

Cutting Down Screen-Time

 

As a parent, I find it hard to absorb if my child spends her entire summer vacations lying on the couch and watches cartoons endlessly. It’s the one thing I dislike in today’s time: parents having let their children watch television and play videogames unsupervised and unmanaged. Of course I do support that videogames are necessary for kids too – after all, they sharpen a child’s cognitive senses and help them in making key decisions faster – but I certainly don’t support the idea of them facing the television screens for hours upon hours.

Children should be encouraged to go out to playgrounds and parks and so here’s how I overcome the problem in my home:

 

• Fixed times for television and videogames

 

I don’t generally like the idea of timed play sessions for children and, to be fair, there isn’t any in my home should play include proper physical activity, but I am quite keen on limiting the time my children spend watching TV or playing videogames. They get 45 minutes of cartoons on weekdays, which changes to 1 hour and 45 minutes on weekends and 30 minutes of videogames on weekdays and 1 hour on the weekends. It’s the maximum they could squeeze out of me, so they normally get at these after they’re done playing outside on the church playground equipment and with their homework.

 

• Encouraging free play

 

Children, especially young ones, need to be given the opportunity to decide and decide what they play and with whom. Not only does this particular exercise help them enhance their imaginations but provide a lot of fun for everyone involved. My little one decides whether she wants to sit at home and colour her colouring books with me or go to the neighbourhood park and play on the commercial playground equipment there. Children love a little bit of authority and it’s only fair we gave them this.

 

• Encouraging sports to them

 

My eldest son (11) was six when he started watching soccer and baseball with his father and is now in the neighbourhood baseball junior team. He also emphasised to us how wanted to join soccer camp in the coming weeks – something that we are quite happy to oblige with. When children are introduced to the world of sports, and they take n interest in them, it opens a whole way to outdoor play for them. This in turn, helps them cut down screen-time naturally.

So are your children watching TV a lot or are engrossed in video games? If yes, then you should try our methods and they aren’t applicable, try getting an outdoor playground play-place to encourage little kids to get outdoor more.