Kids need to Power Off and Play
The best parent strategy for getting kids away from screens, is this: put down your own device.
Role modelling good behaviour is powerful and, yes, difficult, says Judith Rudoler, project manager of Healthy Kids Community Challenge Niagara.
“We need to do this together,” she says.
Implement screen-free days, or a time during the day when everyone puts away their devices. Insist on no screens at dinner, or in the bedroom.
“Everyone has to participate,” she says. “You can’t say, ‘I’m an adult and I have got more important things to do.’
“You have to show kids it’s important to turn off.
“Otherwise, they get a mixed messages if they see the adults in their life on the phone all the time.”
During that time, do something together. Play outside. Read. Pull out a bin of toys. Play a board game.
“All the things we did before screens,” she says.
Niagara was one of 45 communities across Ontario given provincial funding to develop creative ways to promote healthy eating, physical activity and healthy behaviours for children. The province gave Niagara $1.125 million over three years to implement all parts of the program, a community-led initiative through which agencies from different sectors worked together.
For the past nine months, Rudoler has been promoting the final of four themes: Power Off and Play.
The focus has been to cut down on children’s recreational screen time and educate families about the impact on their kids’ lives.
It encourages a balance of screen and play time.
And it follows recommendations set out by the Canadian Paediatric Society on the hours of screen time per day.
• Children younger than two years: None
• Two to four years: Less than one hour.
• Five to 17 years: No more than two hours.
Screens also need to disappear at key moments in the day, notably at meal times and before bed.
Children need uninterrupted sleep, so the pediatric society and researchers suggest no screens at least an hour before bedtime, even removing all screens from
bedrooms.
Children ages five to 13 need at least nine hours of uninterrupted sleep, while kids 14 to 17 need at least eight.
And all this needs to be replaced with physical activity, face-to-face social interactions and fun, educational activities, Rudoler says.
A picture book for young children called Power Off … And Play! will soon be available free from local EarlyON centres and libraries. It tells the story of opposites — playing a video game versus running around outdoors, playing soccer on a computer versus kicking a ball into a goal net.
Parents also need to understand what an emerging field of research says about the impact screens are having on their children’s lives.
“It affects every aspect,” says Rudoler. “It’s a holistic problem.”
Simply put, screen time can harm children’s development as well as their physical and psychosocial health. Higher screen time is linked to poor cognitive and language development, lower levels of physical activity, unhealthy weights, behavioural problems and low self-esteem.
Parents’ screen use can influence children’s screen use. Here are some strategies:
• Create a screen time log for your family. Use it to track how much time each of you spends in front of a screen each day.
• Create an activity calendar for your family to follow. Give your kids the chance to brainstorm what they would like to do in their free time outside of screen time.
• Build an activity pack filled with non-screen based activities (e.g. books, colouring pencils, a length of rope, playing cards, etc.).
• Rearrange your home to reduce access to screens, especially in spaces where your family eats meals and snacks or where your kids sleep.
Above all, remember there is hope, says Rudoler.
“It’s not that we’ve lost sight of what’s important,” she says. “What’s important is we just need to choose it on a regular basis.”