How to Navigate Spring Break Disrupting Your Household's Screen Time Rules
The introduction of a new device or relaxed screen time rules during a break from school is a chance for children and parents to have a conversation.
For many parents, spring break is here. The kids might be home for longer stretches of time, some of their friends might be out of town, and importantly, they might be on their devices a little more. Basically, your well-established routine is being disrupted!
This is a lot like a birthday or holiday welcoming a Switch, new console, or other device into your home. It might be hard to figure out how to fit this into an already packed life. If that’s happening right now in your home, you’re in good company, but rest assured you can incorporate fun new toys and devices into a sustainable routine.
Here’s how.
First of All, Don’t Panic
In my work at TheGamerEducator on Instagram, I frequently get panicked messages from families whose kids got a new device and seem to love it…perhaps a little too much. Every time my first question is: “how recently did you get it?” and inevitably it was a recent gift or purchase. The reality is, people like things that are new, and sometimes if we get something we’ve anticipated or wished for—for weeks or months, in some cases—it becomes the thing we focus on, like reaching for our new coat every day instead of our old one. Kids are the same.
Plus, imagine how you’d feel if kids never wanted to play with their new device after hundreds of dollars and many hours invested in buying and setting it up. Chances are we wouldn’t like that either, so give kids (and yourself) some grace and remember: new exciting things are just that, and this new excitement will likely wane over time.
Decide on a Routine and Prepare Everyone
If you already have a routine with screen time or video games, you might not need to make any changes. But if it is new to you, you may want to consult the first article I wrote for Crossplay all about setting up a screen time routine. Whether you do this cold turkey or ease your way into it is up to you and what works best for your kids.
Personally, I like the holidays to be a little more relaxed, and the return to school signifies the return to “normalcy” in just about all aspects of our lives, so we lean a little more “cold turkey.”
Regardless of what you choose, do not overlook preparing your kids. Most of us are already back to school, but this advice stands whenever your family might encounter a change in routine, or incorporating something new into your lives. Sometimes a single weekend can deviate so much from “typical” routine that we can reset in a similar way, even if it hasn’t been a formal holiday break.
When kids know what to expect, things really do go more smoothly. If we as adults envision allowing 30 minutes of Switch play time after school but we don’t tell our kids, they are inevitably going to ask us “Can I still play the Switch when school starts? On weekdays? When? How long?” This is annoying, to be sure, but it does make sense that they would ask questions if they don’t know what to expect.
Going back to the rigors of work and school aren’t exactly easy, and kids are going to miss the freedoms of break as well as the fun, including video games and screens. Giving them an idea of how those fun things will continue to be available in their everyday lives can even help the transition back to “real life,” not hinder it.
“Prepare Everyone” Includes Yourself
The first “real” video game release my child was excited for was Forza Horizon 5. After the opening cutscene of a Ford Bronco being dropped by an airplane onto the top of an erupting volcano, my child veered the Bronco off the road they were placed on, did a u-turn, and attempted to drive directly into the lava-filled mouth of the volcano. The game reset them.
The message the game was sending was clear: you can drive your car into lava, and the game will reset you. After three or four tries, my child tired of that boundary enforcement and played the game as it was intended. If the game had admonished my child, that interaction would have felt very different; the neutrality helped the message get through without a feeling of shame.
Especially if video games or devices are new to your family, kids are going to see a cut back on their access as a potential restriction, and they are very likely not going to like that. As hard as it is, try to not take this personally. Remember, kids will, by nature, test boundaries to ensure they are steady. This is their job, and they are good at it, sometimes too good at it. If in doubt, act like a video game: create your rules and boundaries, and enforce them neutrally without unnecessary commentary.
I like to have a few go-to phrases at the ready, such as “remember, you’ll be able to play the Switch after school today” or “getting back into routine is hard, and our routine is that the iPad is available after dinner for 30 minutes.” This way I keep the boundaries neutral, and also help my child learn to trust those boundaries.
Routines Are a Fall-Back for When You Need Them
The nicest thing about routine, for me, is the structure it provides. We can deviate from it when it suits our whole family, and we can go back to it because of the time and effort we’ve invested to make it sustainable for everyone.
When we know the expectations, we know how to meet them, and when it comes to a routine, we also know that we can fall back on it and trust it. That benefits all of us, not just our kids, and shows our kids how fun can fit into the rest of their busy lives.
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