It might have been difficult during the school years to keep your children focused on their school work without their phones or social media chirping away. Now with summer in full swing, there’s many more hours in a day to fill with activities that hopefully don’t revolve around staring at their screen. But how do you give them a healthy balance of phone time and activities?
Setting Boundaries
You more than likely set boundaries on phone and computer time during the school year, and summer time is no different. For a lot of kids, this may be the only means of keeping in communication with their friends, so you do want to keep that in mind when setting time limits. The times you set shouldn’t be too restrictive, since this may be the only way they can connect with some friends on a daily basis, and you will want to support those developmental connections. If your children enjoy video games, there are some games that are multiplayer and they can chat with their friends while playing. This can help aid in using up some of their computer or TV screen time without depleting them of their social interactions.
Change The Interactions
You may also be allowing your children to interact more with their friends and classmates, whether it’s playing football in the park or getting together in your own backyard. Summer may be the time to set a little more severe of a time limit on the phones in order to get your children out and about over the summer. Setting a stricter time frame on the phone use while increasing actual social and physical interactions may be the happy medium this year. Whether your children were in school or doing it virtually, it’s important to continue the physical, social interactions kids need while they grow up and learn social cues. Any child of any age needs this learning, and during the summer months it may be easier to coordinate with parents and set a schedule so all families are involved and can come together. It may even be possible for your child to get the vaccine if they are around 12 years old and above, making the interactions less risky.
Stick To It
Depending on your child’s age, you can set the tone and activities that can help them bolster their relationships while not spending every waking moment on their phones. Whether it’s reading, staying active inside or out, or playing more directly with friends, you can set the parameters on what’s acceptable and how long their phone and computer time can be.
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Katie Kyzivat