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Two boys, 9 and almost 7. They get 40 minutes a day (mon-thur) of tv that they watch together. On Friday and Sunday, we have family movie night. Age appropria

Two boys, 9 and almost 7. They get 40 minutes a day (mon-thur) of tv that they watch together. On Friday and Sunday, we have family movie night. Age appropriate, which is getting harder. 2 hours a week of games (mostly switch, but they sometimes play minecraft or approved games on mobile devices). This happens over Sat/Sun, and we let them manage how they want to allocate time over the two days. One observation is that after they play video games, they get agitated and angry afterwards, and it ruins the next hour or two of activities as they act like little assholes. They do have access to Spotify to listen to music (content controls are turned on), but if we notice that they are watching the videos and not "listening" the phones turn off. The one area where it gets dicey is my 9 year old is learning how to code, so managing that screen time is weird (is it like watching tv/playing games?). I dunno, but I generally don't say anything as this is his best use of devices during the week. Shit is hard to keep up with tbh.

someguydave 5y ago
yeah my kids get angry after playing video games, especially if they lose
- aproductguy 5y ago
  I truly hate it. The only saving grace to all of this is that both my boys read at least an hour a day. hopefully it all balances out, but we will have a strict no social media rule until they get to the teenagers that we can't manage anymore.
- staunch 5y ago
  If their game time is highly restricted then: 1. Losing is hugely disappointing because there's no time to win the next one 2. They can't get very good, so gaming is more frustrating 3. They can't build coping skills because of how little they've won/lost
  - aproductguy 5y ago
    Solid points. And I agree. I played hours of video games when I was like 10/11.
ta_random_guid 5y ago
Woah, these limits are just... brutal. Like excruciatingly low. Depends on this kids, obviously, but we let ours to stay on pads/computers for (pretty much) as long as they want IF all homework's done, they make occasional breaks, do other things (like read books) and they don't get zombified in process and can quit on a short notice. No Tiktok, IG or any other doomscrollers. We had a chat about them, they know the party policy, so it's not really enforced, but they don't really crave these either. Age-restricted stuff tends to sort itself out, but we track what they play. Again, it's all based on the party policy rather than enforcement and we have gentlemen's agreement that they ask if we may consider some game off limits. Been like that for several years. One is a teenager now, another is on the way. So far so good.
908B64B197 5y ago
> One observation is that after they play video games, they get agitated and angry afterwards, and it ruins the next hour or two of activities as they act like little assholes. Two hours isn't a long time to make any progress on a game, especially if they start playing strategy games like Age of Empire where 1 hour games are the norm. It must be very frustrating for them to stop for arbitrary reasons (the $EVIL_SCREEN can't be used for more than $TIME) when they know their schoolwork is done and friends are still online. > The one area where it gets dicey is my 9 year old is learning how to code, so managing that screen time is weird (is it like watching tv/playing games?) It might feel like a game to him. Remember reading books? Assigned reading took the fun out of reading since the selection was imposed and you knew you were goign to be quized on it. But especially if it's unstructured and there's no assignment, he may think programming is a weird sandbox/logic game.

someguydave 5y ago

yeah my kids get angry after playing video games, especially if they lose

aproductguy 5y ago
I truly hate it. The only saving grace to all of this is that both my boys read at least an hour a day. hopefully it all balances out, but we will have a strict no social media rule until they get to the teenagers that we can't manage anymore.
staunch 5y ago
If their game time is highly restricted then: 1. Losing is hugely disappointing because there's no time to win the next one 2. They can't get very good, so gaming is more frustrating 3. They can't build coping skills because of how little they've won/lost
- aproductguy 5y ago
  Solid points. And I agree. I played hours of video games when I was like 10/11.

ta_random_guid 5y ago

Woah, these limits are just... brutal. Like excruciatingly low. Depends on this kids, obviously, but we let ours to stay on pads/computers for (pretty much) as long as they want IF all homework's done, they make occasional breaks, do other things (like read books) and they don't get zombified in process and can quit on a short notice. No Tiktok, IG or any other doomscrollers. We had a chat about them, they know the party policy, so it's not really enforced, but they don't really crave these either. Age-restricted stuff tends to sort itself out, but we track what they play. Again, it's all based on the party policy rather than enforcement and we have gentlemen's agreement that they ask if we may consider some game off limits. Been like that for several years. One is a teenager now, another is on the way. So far so good.

908B64B197 5y ago

> One observation is that after they play video games, they get agitated and angry afterwards, and it ruins the next hour or two of activities as they act like little assholes. Two hours isn't a long time to make any progress on a game, especially if they start playing strategy games like Age of Empire where 1 hour games are the norm. It must be very frustrating for them to stop for arbitrary reasons (the $EVIL_SCREEN can't be used for more than $TIME) when they know their schoolwork is done and friends are still online. > The one area where it gets dicey is my 9 year old is learning how to code, so managing that screen time is weird (is it like watching tv/playing games?) It might feel like a game to him. Remember reading books? Assigned reading took the fun out of reading since the selection was imposed and you knew you were goign to be quized on it. But especially if it's unstructured and there's no assignment, he may think programming is a weird sandbox/logic game.