WHY PARENTS MATTER PART 5: REPLACEMENTS OF SCREENTIME
Replacing Screentime
Children don’t just need less screentime, they need something to replace it. The following are suggested replacement activities that can:
1. calm an overstimulated brain,
2. strengthen attention and executive functions,
3. enhance thinking and self-control,
4. support skills of language and communication development,
All while quietly training their brains to adjust to and then enjoy slower and more enriching cognitive activities.
As an additional benefit, these activities will strengthen the parent–child relationship, which is a great benefit.
Board and card games.
Try Uno, Go Fish, Memory, Connect 4, Guess Who, or any very simple card game. For younger children make homemade matching cards (even drawn shapes).
These simple games involve:
1. turn-taking
2. following rules
3. memory
4. counting and matching
5. communicating with others
6. planning and
7. creating strategies
These are all activities for increasing skills of executive functioning and more.
2. Tell me about your day.
Each day at dinner ask:
1. Tell me three things that happened today.
2. What was your favorite part? The hardest part?
3. If today was a story, what would the title be?
These questions enhance skills of expressive language, including the use of emotional vocabulary, memory and the organization of ideas.
3. Exchange after-school screen time for snack time conversations.
After arriving home, and instead of allowing the child to collapse in front of a screen, consider the following:
Set out a simple snack (crackers, fruit or some other lite item), join your child at a counter or table for 10–15 minutes and ask either or both sets of questions.
High–Low–Wow things of the day.
1. High: What was the best part of your day?
2. Low: What was the hardest part of today?
3. Wow: What thing surprised you today? Did something unexpected happen today?
These activities will touch on memory, organizing and analysis of events, skills of conversation and verbal expression.
4. Two Truths and Something SillySomething fun to do.
1. Ask your child to tell you two true things about the day and one silly or not true thing.
2. Have your child ask: Which one was made up?
3. You then respond.
These questions and activities lend toward strengthening skills of conversation (listening and speaking), vocabulary usage, remembering and sequencing of events as well as self-awareness by reflecting on the day’s events. None are stressful or forced, rather, they are fun and easy to implement.
5. Turn screen time into job time with real responsibilities.
Children generally move to screentime while parents cook, clean, or do other chores. Instead, bring your child into your work activity, but make it fun, not an obligation, such as a “kitchen mission.”
While cooking, assign your child a task of food preparation. Tell how important that, and each task, is because each is a key step in making a tasty meal.
Examples might be to:
1. stir the batter
2. pour pre-measured ingredients, or, measure out ingredients depending on the child’s skills
3. locate items from a list (“Can you find the red spoon?”)
Add easy word challenges:
1. “Tell me the steps as we make this.”
2. “What do you think will happen when we mix these together?”
3. “Can you describe the smell/texture?”
The skills of learning found in these activities involve following multi-step directions, sequencing tasks, involve multiple senses and language (receptive and expressive). All can be found in a fun task and that can be eaten and enjoyed later.
6. Change drive time into language time.
Many children default to screentime in the car. This is a perfect situation to work on skills of language development.
For example, say,
“I’m thinking of something or someone.”
Then add the parameters of the word by picking a category such as an animal, a pet, a dessert, a state or even a family member.
Or, say “I’m thinking of...”
“...a word with 3 letters that begins with a “b” and does not fly.”
“...something that’s green that can be eaten, but not at breakfast time.”
“...someone who is more than 15 years older than you”
This easy game strengthens flexible thinking, word retrieval, categorization, vocabulary and working memory. It’s also fun.
7. What belongs here?
You or child picks a category (animals, foods, things that are cold, things at school, etc.)
You and your child take turns naming items until one of you gets stuck for another item to add in the category.
You move up a level to only animals that live in water, only foods that are crunchy or things that are noisy.
It’s an easy and fun game that touches on skills of cognition, language, attention and more.
Read Part 6: Research on scheduling and downtime activities