Thankfully, my kids are all adults so tech was not as available when they were growing up. I didn't even have video games in the house. They had to go outside to play! They learned quickly never to say "I'm bored." "I'm bored" resulted in washing windows, pulling weeds, etc. My mantra was "It is my job to raise children who can take care of themselves and be used by God to care for others."
Thanks for this! We were talking about this today and comes up often. I am a mean mom, my baby, 18 in a month gets four hrs per day of any social media. She can ask for more and I admit I suck at it. Your plan seems amazing and I just shared it multiple people. Youngest has zero self control and I feel like a failure when it comes to her screen time. She was active outside growing up but addicted to her form of heroin in the form of iPad, laptop, tv, any chance she could get. To this day I have password on my laptop and iPad. I actually “misplaced” an ipad hiding it from her! These kids are truly lost and I feel sorry for them that they won’t get to live the life we did before screens.
Great post! This is hugely helpful! I may have badly screwed things up already with my teen daughters and their phones, but this is a good roadmap for our 8 year when the time comes for her to get a phone .
We implemented a lot of these more successful things later than you would think. We failed a lot. In fact my daughters were laughing over text today when I would have them do 30 sit ups for every half hour of TV. That lasted about a week.
Some variants on a couple of them worked well for us.
My bribery was getting a newer or better phone if a certain mark was achieved. The other was them having to contribute to a nicer phone.
Here is another way I incentivized good marks: If you don't want me to inspect your study/work habits or hassle you, you need to achieve a mark of XX. Neither of my kids wanted my nose in their schooling. This one worked really well.
We did a couple other things. Wifi turned off at 11:00 every night. All devices and computers were centralized in public areas until they were older, and I did monitor email when they were younger, and simply warned them about the dangers of sending videos or pictures of themselves.
I think the screen time/allowance is brilliant. Wish I would have thought of that one.
I wish we could have figured out a good way to turn off wifi. Brilliant.
I made the mistake of guaranteeing constant iPhone upgrades if my kids accomplished something that I figured would be impossible. It turns out they wanted to upgrade their phones so badly that all four of them slayed that dragon no problem. Oooops.
Did you ever read their emails or texts? For a long time, I told my kids all their data was mine until they could pay for it themselves. But, tbh, I just didn't particularly enjoy discovering the world that my kids' lived in. So I rarely breached the privacy barrier with them...
Most advanced wifi routers have a schedule on them if you know how to muck with that stuff but I work with computers and networks professionally, so that stuff was easy for me.
The school they went to gave them iPads but controlled it pretty well. My kids didn't get phones until grade 8.
I gave them their own personal email addresses on our own domain (i.e. mylastname.com) so they could have their own personal email that we had control over. As a result, I would scan the incoming emails but generally didn't read them. The only time I intervened once was when one of their friends was sending huge sized videos that were fine, but treading on dangerous ground (as in don't send anything you wouldn't want the whole world to see). I never read texts, but they were already quite old before they had something that could text.
Overall, I really didn't get into any of their personal stuff.
Only one of my kids was bribable with nice phones. My other daughter aced through school of her own volition and would always take my blackberry hand me downs without complaint.
I have a friend that her oldest son wanted a cell phone around 10 or 12 years old. She said no until you be able to pay for it. (Mom)She didn’t have a computer at Home until she turned 18 years old all homework was done at the library. But family always ended up spoiling her kids 🤷♀️ https://www.bitchute.com/video/No5daw8Bk5F4/
I think skin in the game is good. So paying for the phone, or the plan. Same with a car--pay for the car or the monthly insurance or gas. It's not easy tho with the tech. I have heard the phrase: "you have to raise your kids in the era THEY live; not the one you were raised in." There is truth to that, obviously. However, the tech is not healthy, especially in higher doses. So I think we probably need to live in constant tension and fight against too much assimilation to today's tech norms. Be prepared for a fight tho!
Thankfully, my kids are all adults so tech was not as available when they were growing up. I didn't even have video games in the house. They had to go outside to play! They learned quickly never to say "I'm bored." "I'm bored" resulted in washing windows, pulling weeds, etc. My mantra was "It is my job to raise children who can take care of themselves and be used by God to care for others."
Thanks for this! We were talking about this today and comes up often. I am a mean mom, my baby, 18 in a month gets four hrs per day of any social media. She can ask for more and I admit I suck at it. Your plan seems amazing and I just shared it multiple people. Youngest has zero self control and I feel like a failure when it comes to her screen time. She was active outside growing up but addicted to her form of heroin in the form of iPad, laptop, tv, any chance she could get. To this day I have password on my laptop and iPad. I actually “misplaced” an ipad hiding it from her! These kids are truly lost and I feel sorry for them that they won’t get to live the life we did before screens.
Its an active, intentional function as a parent to stay abreast of this tech stuff. Sounds like you are making the effort. Stay in the game!
Forgot to add, screen time is set to 10:30 every night, not welcomed by her of course but oh well!
Great post! This is hugely helpful! I may have badly screwed things up already with my teen daughters and their phones, but this is a good roadmap for our 8 year when the time comes for her to get a phone .
We implemented a lot of these more successful things later than you would think. We failed a lot. In fact my daughters were laughing over text today when I would have them do 30 sit ups for every half hour of TV. That lasted about a week.
Great post. Some really nifty ideas.
Some variants on a couple of them worked well for us.
My bribery was getting a newer or better phone if a certain mark was achieved. The other was them having to contribute to a nicer phone.
Here is another way I incentivized good marks: If you don't want me to inspect your study/work habits or hassle you, you need to achieve a mark of XX. Neither of my kids wanted my nose in their schooling. This one worked really well.
We did a couple other things. Wifi turned off at 11:00 every night. All devices and computers were centralized in public areas until they were older, and I did monitor email when they were younger, and simply warned them about the dangers of sending videos or pictures of themselves.
I think the screen time/allowance is brilliant. Wish I would have thought of that one.
I wish we could have figured out a good way to turn off wifi. Brilliant.
I made the mistake of guaranteeing constant iPhone upgrades if my kids accomplished something that I figured would be impossible. It turns out they wanted to upgrade their phones so badly that all four of them slayed that dragon no problem. Oooops.
Did you ever read their emails or texts? For a long time, I told my kids all their data was mine until they could pay for it themselves. But, tbh, I just didn't particularly enjoy discovering the world that my kids' lived in. So I rarely breached the privacy barrier with them...
Most advanced wifi routers have a schedule on them if you know how to muck with that stuff but I work with computers and networks professionally, so that stuff was easy for me.
The school they went to gave them iPads but controlled it pretty well. My kids didn't get phones until grade 8.
I gave them their own personal email addresses on our own domain (i.e. mylastname.com) so they could have their own personal email that we had control over. As a result, I would scan the incoming emails but generally didn't read them. The only time I intervened once was when one of their friends was sending huge sized videos that were fine, but treading on dangerous ground (as in don't send anything you wouldn't want the whole world to see). I never read texts, but they were already quite old before they had something that could text.
Overall, I really didn't get into any of their personal stuff.
Only one of my kids was bribable with nice phones. My other daughter aced through school of her own volition and would always take my blackberry hand me downs without complaint.
I have a friend that her oldest son wanted a cell phone around 10 or 12 years old. She said no until you be able to pay for it. (Mom)She didn’t have a computer at Home until she turned 18 years old all homework was done at the library. But family always ended up spoiling her kids 🤷♀️ https://www.bitchute.com/video/No5daw8Bk5F4/
I think skin in the game is good. So paying for the phone, or the plan. Same with a car--pay for the car or the monthly insurance or gas. It's not easy tho with the tech. I have heard the phrase: "you have to raise your kids in the era THEY live; not the one you were raised in." There is truth to that, obviously. However, the tech is not healthy, especially in higher doses. So I think we probably need to live in constant tension and fight against too much assimilation to today's tech norms. Be prepared for a fight tho!