This summer while I had 11 kids in my care! 😱 everyone got an hour a day on a tv, tablet or computer just for my sanity (and if I wasn't watching them they spent another hour watching during a cousin's or siblings turn).
Exhibit A
There were many family movie nights (which meant the kids vegging out while I do what I do (i.e. dishes, laundry, reading, drinking wine while staring off into space. The usual)
Aaaand if I needed to leave the house for any amount of time (let's say more than ten minutes, case in point the time I ran down the street to make a Facebook marketplace exchange for less than Ten Minutes!!! and came back to a hole in a bedroom door Just Because someone had asked a sibling with all of the Nice they possessed to change the channel. Oh Lort) then the tv was used as kids Valium so I didn't have to worry
A. that small children were escaping and making their way to Canada
and
B. that the above scenario of niceness wasn't occurring repeatedly until I got back home.
We are detoxing nicely without screens around here and have run the gamut of The Shakes, Horror, Asking Repeatedly, All of the Complaints, Wandering Lifelessly, and....
*finally* settling down with merely books/music/toys/puzzles/outdoor activities such as trampolines and swimming and the like.
Exhibit B
I just read an article that someone posted today from the New York Times. It is scientific brain facts that screen time is to kids what heroin addiction is to adults.
And as I watch everyone come out of their zombie-ish summer coma, I concur.
Screens are basically The Devil. The end.
