Happiness Blog

Q: Sometimes it feels like today’s technology is so overwhelming it’s impossible to manage it as a parent. My young kids love screens – watching or playing – and it seems like in one sitting they get addicted. When we try to shut down the TV or iPad they turn into complete beasts. It’s especially hard after a vacation, or when weather has kept them indoors for a few days. Any advice?

A: It’s hard to keep up with all the screen time research and recommendations, and even harder to shift the tides at home when the kids get used to it. Parents today have a greater screen time challenge than ever before – screens are ubiquitous! If it’s not a video game console or television at home, it’s iPads or a DVD player in the car, or a parent’s phone in the restaurant or shopping cart. Plus, these games, streaming services, and apps are almost all portable so it can be easy to supply it and hard to get a kid to desire something else.

One reason there’s such a hubbub about screens in this media-heavy society is that young children have immature brains that are developing rapidly and they are unable to fully utilize media to learn the way adults can in terms of tucking it away and intentionally pulling it out later to use it in real life. Developing brains are unable to exercise self-control and curb obsessive behavior so they lack an “off switch” for activities that dump dopamine, like many apps and video games do. Perhaps more importantly, screen time is time not spent engaged in healthy activities such as physical play, parent-child interactions, mind-meandering time, and sleep. Which is why the WHO provides recommendations for sleep and active play.

Before you hide the remotes and tell your children that screens rot their brains, let’s explore it a bit further. Screens aren’t bad; rather, they’re something you can use in a healthy or unhealthy way. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics acknowledges media can enhance daily life when used intentionally. The goal is threefold:

1. 1. Of course, limit the use of passive screen time (watching a TV show without discussion about the show) and addictive screen time (games or apps that activate the reward system in the brain). The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends no screen time for babies under one-year-old and one hour for children over two.
   2. Engage in screen time with your children. Learn to play their video game and talk with them about what’s happening on the screen. Video games can teach kids teamwork, patience, perseverance, critical thinking, decision-making, timing, planning, spatial relations, and even kindness (depending on the game!). They can help children exercise their creativity and logic skills, reading skills, and improve eye-hand coordination. Talking with your child about the social interactions in movies and TV shows can help turn entertainment into something more meaningful. Writing, reading, and saying the letter S Elmo just taught you and your toddler makes it more “real,” something that exists and is useable in their world and not just Elmo’s.
   3. Balance it with other important life activities: social time, family time, outdoor play, exercise, and downtime that allows your mind to go wherever it likes without being directed by an external source. Also, sleep. Television viewing has been shown to reduce sleep efficiency without affecting sleep patterns, so it might seem that your child is sleeping just fine even with excessive television but it’s likely the quality of sleep has been affected. Blue wavelength light emitted by screens suppress secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone. A lack of REM sleep can affect mood, memory, and learning; and has been linked to migraines and obesity.

As with many things in life, with screens you want to strive for quality and balance, and teach that to your kids. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests creating a family media plan that fits your values and lifestyle. If you’re dreading changing the screen time habit- well, hang in there. Habits are hard to break no matter one’s age, and young kids who especially have the sense that everything will stay just as it is forever may be shocked and indignant when it changes. If screen time is your child’s currency, save part of it to use as reward for getting responsibilities done. And who knows? Maybe engaging in media with your children will strengthen your connection and make them more interested in doing other non-screen things with you. Win-win!

Q: My 7-year-old son seems to have forgotten how to aim and flush when using the toilet! It is so frustrating, and now his younger brother is following in his footsteps. I am sick and tired of cleaning pee. I need some advice!

A: Oh boy. And – oh, boys! It’s a problem parents of little girls usually don’t have to deal with outside of the occasional “Pee Like a Boy” experiment. It’s amazing how many intricate nooks and crannies there are on a basic toilet, isn’t it? You don’t notice them until you have to clean them, and then it takes many precious minutes to clean the whole thing and a mere nanosecond of mis-fire to mess it up a moment later.

Rest assured, you are just one member of a large group of Moms (or Dads) of Boys who lament ever teaching their son to pee standing up. But what’s done is done, and now you’re stuck with it. However, you’re not stuck with being Pee Cleaner (at least not 100% of the time). Have a sit-down with your boys where you calmly explain that pee is making the bathroom dirty and smell bad, and it needs to be cleaner for guests and everyone who lives there. They’ll probably agree that they prefer a clean toilet too! Announce there will be a new rule: every week the boys are in charge of cleaning the bathrooms. They will clean the mirror, counter, sinks, toilet surfaces (not the bowl) and floor around the toilet (and walls, if you have especially poor aimers) with rinsed out baby wipes (no chemicals and no streaks!). Be with them and talk them through it for a few weeks and then let them do it on their own and call you to inspect the results. They re-do it until it passes inspection.

Soon after they start this new chore they’ll probably notice that pee, toothpaste, and soap gets harder to remove the longer it sits, so they might soon start thinking that it behooves them to clean up their bathroom mess immediately – or not make one in the first place! – because it takes very little effort to rinse down fresh toothpaste spit and makes their weekend job much easier.

And that’s where the real benefit comes in. This whole business isn’t about getting Master Pee Cleaner off your resume. That’s a side benefit. The beauty is that natural consequences (rather than parental lectures) teach your child to be more careful about making a mess, to clean up a mess when it’s made, and personal responsibility and mastery of a weekly chore that just comes with being part of the family. It might be a tough sell at first, but it’s a good age for them to learn that everyone pitches in with chores.

Now get some bon-bons, sit back, and watch the cleaning begin!