How Do You Navigate Game Dates in a Family That Has No Devices?
No matter how screenless you and your young children are (or may want them to be), there comes a point where even someone else’s devices become inevitable. You might not want your kids to have tablets, but all of their cousins do. Your child wants to play with his friend outside, but he is always tied to his Nintendo Switch.
This week, a parenting question was asked by a non-device parent on our Offspring Facebook group:
We are “device free,” but socially most of the families we live with do not work. How do you navigate screen time in social situations? My child is four years old, this has not yet been accepted, but our neighbor, who is 6 years old, sits on the tablet all the time, and so does his friends. How can I become a parent at that moment, so to speak, when the time is right?
As you can imagine, living without devices (unlike most families around you) is likely to get harder and harder as your child gets older. And how you deal with these situations as they grow will also depend on whether you intend to keep them completely device free for their childhood, or if you plan to allow limited device use as they get older.
Either way, it’s helpful to find a community of other non-device parents. One of the best is the Parenting Without Screen website, created by psychologist and psychology professor Megan Owens and her husband, who are both parents without a screen. The site has a variety of parenting articles on research “wherever you are on the screen. No screen, screen limiters or screen hugs. “
Specifically, Owens wrote an article titled ” How Our Screen-Free Kids Keep Up with the Screen-Loving Jones, ” in which she gives practical advice on how to introduce your kids to popular children’s TV / movie characters (through books!) And how to help your children to answer the questions of their peers “what shows do you watch / what games do you play”. Searching for “screenless parenting communities” on Facebook will also give you a list of public and private groups full of like-minded people.
Of course, as your child gets older, he or she will spend more time away from you and supervised by teachers at school and other parents on play dates. Children now use tablets or Chromebooks quite often in school — my son has been using one of them regularly in class since first grade and attends weekly digital literacy classes where they learn to safely explore educational topics on the Internet.
But you are asking specifically about social situations, which indicates to me that you are less concerned about them playing first in math in school than what your child is wasting on a tablet with his friends when you prefer them were on the street. Play hide and seek. As my own son got older, I developed a general philosophy that the rules of whatever house he is in are the rules he will follow. (Within reasonable limits, of course.)
Some parents allow their children to have a variety of Nerf pistols at their disposal; some are totally against toy weapons. Some will allow all the unhealthy foods their children can want; others have unlimited fruits. Some adopt a playful lifestyle; others, like you, have no devices.
In general, however, if there are no security concerns, I feel comfortable letting my son temporarily act according to the other parent’s rules, especially since he only goes to the homes of the parents I know and trust. And if I feel like their rules are just too soft for me (they allow them to play video games that I think are too mature for his age, for example), I accept them.
If there is a situation where, say, you are going on a weekend trip with friends or family members with screen-loving kids in tow, discuss beforehand how you can work together to limit the screen time of all the kids so they can use their time together. (They might have a special movie night, but the tablets will stay at home so the kids can instead spend hours swimming or playing board games with each other.)
This could mean a small shift in thinking from a “family without devices” to a “home without devices.” This takes into account the devices and screen time they are likely to spend at school and at friends’ homes, while prioritizing your commitment to living most of their lives without devices on an ongoing basis.
Do you have a parenting dilemma? Send your question to mwalbert@lifehacker.com with “Parental Advice” in the subject line, and I’ll try to answer it here.