Kirstie: My boys spent too long on their iPads ... so I smashed them!
ANY parent sick of trying to prise their children’s gadgets from their grip can surely sympathise.
TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp has revealed she smashed up her sons’ iPads in front of them after they continued to play video games beyond the time period she had permitted.
The mother of Bay Atlas, 12, and Oscar Hercules, ten, said she went to extreme lengths when the boys refused to stop playing the online games Fortnite and PUBG – both of which have caused concern over addiction levels among youngsters.
Miss Allsopp, 47, told Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine show yesterday: ‘This is the first time I’ve said this publicly. In June I smashed my kids’ iPads – not in a violent way. I actually banged them on the table leg.’
Explaining her reasons, she added: ‘There is a game called Fortnite and another PUBG and I decided that we had made all sorts of rules and all sorts of times when we said you can’t play them and all those rules got broken. In the end I said, “Right that is it, I have to physically [break them].’
Asked how she did it, the Location, Location, Location presenter, who had her children with property developer partner Ben Andersen and is also stepmother to his two older sons, replied: ‘It was remarkably easy. I didn’t intend to speak about it but it’s come up now.’
After some people suggested she might have been better off simply confiscating the iPads – which can cost more than £1,000 – Miss Allsopp defended her approach, writing on Twitter: ‘If you found your kids with a packet of cigarettes would you say “I won’t destroy these because they are worth a tenner but please don’t smoke?”. No of course you wouldn’t.’
Miss Allsopp, who is currently promoting her new cookbook Kirstie’s Real Kitchen, has previously insisted she will not let her children have internet-enabled smartphones as she is worried about the ‘damaging’ effects of social media. They will instead have to make do
‘I banged them on the table leg’ ‘They won’t have smartphones’
with a basic Nokia model. She said: ‘Teenagers are vulnerable, their brains are developing. We [adults] know we can get entangled in social media.
‘We can go through Instagram and Twitter, etc, but our brains are developed. My children are not going to have a smartphone, they are going to have a Nokia 3310. I don’t want them playing games and using social media on the way to school and doing the same on the way back.’
Last month, Miss Allsopp revealed to Prima magazine that she plans to leave her rumoured £16million fortune to her children so they can ‘do what they like’ in their careers. She said: ‘If they want to be a teacher, midwife or research scientist, I want them to be able to do that.’
However she insisted she ‘wouldn’t give them a penny’ if they decided not to work at all.