So how’s that ambitious plan to have a summer without screen time for kids going? There were so many good comments and shares on my post about having a screen free summer here and on Instagram. Several people said that the ‘Abstainer’ approach of cutting out screens for periods of time worked for them. Others said that they preferred teaching moderation with screens and many said they had a pretty firm set of family rules around television and screen usage. I really enjoyed all of the perspectives, particularly from parents of older children and those with different challenges.
Our screen free summer has been a success so far.
With some hindsight I can see that we stumbled into a clever play the first four days the tv was removed: we had a big extended family gathering. My kids were so busy running laps around the house with their cousins they barely noticed the television was gone. There was a lot of activity that weekend and no time to get bored and ask for screen time. It was a great start.
The other screen free helper was rearranging our living room. Taking a page from our condo life, we moved most of the kid’s toys and books into our living room. Our furniture arrangement moved from television centred to conversation facilitating: our couch now faces two high backed chairs. This change in room styling and set-up helped the kids make a mental shift for life without the television. They also really enjoy having their toys out in the open and near the adults.
We’ve regularly used television to keep the kids occupied/not fighting while a parent makes dinner. Now that the kid’s toys and books are in view of the kitchen I can keep an eye on them and help as needed while cooking. It’s not perfect: they still squabble and I have to step in. And probably the biggest ‘issue’ is that I get asked constantly to read books by our youngest two kids. It’s lovely to read to my kids but not really possible for me to do it many hours everyday. On the upside: my oldest can now read books to his brothers. So biggest brother is getting lots of brownie points reading to his younger brothers.
Our mostly screen free road trip.
We spent a week road tripping and it was mostly screen free. I say mostly because the kids did get to watch television at the hotel. Seeing the kids go slack jawed and glassy eyed watching cartoons for the first time in 10 days was more motivation for me. They also got grumpy as soon as we said the television was being turned off and were remarkably more fun after some fresh air.
Screens did help us out on this family road trip. I caught a bad cold and was in rough shape. In between seeing all the dinosaurs, my husband would take our older two swimming and leave the youngest with me. While I was napping the youngest got to watch unlimited cartoons. Shhhh, don’t tell his brothers.
In the past we would bring an iPad on long drives and our oldest would get some time with it when his younger brothers were sleeping. We would also let them watch cartoons for the last hour of really long (8 hour) drive days. This road trip we committed to no screens in the car. It worked really well because I downloaded a bunch of audio books.
Audio books help us have a screen free road trip.
Audio books are the best. Our middle child is now five and we are hitting a sweet spot with audiobooks: he and his eight year old brother will happily listen to books for hours on a long drive. Most of the audio books we listen to are free but a few we paid for. Here’s all the ways we source and listen to audio books:
Audiobooks from the library. We’ve done both the old-school, borrowing a set of CDs, and the new-school, downloading audio books using the OverDrive app that is connected to our library account. Highly recommend seeing what audio book options your library has because as I will detail next, they are very expensive to buy. Also highly recommend looking into library audiobooks a few weeks or even months before your trip. Our library has waitlists for the most popular audiobooks and there isn’t a huge selection of audiobooks. So it pays to do some advance planning and waitlist for some books or request CD options be brought in from other libraries in your network.
Paid audiobooks through Apple iTunes and Audible. Our first foray into audiobooks was buying the Diary of a Wimpy Kid audio book for an Easter weekend trip to the Sunshine Coast. Our oldest thought it was hilarious. And we suffered through listening to that book many, many times. We’ve bought a few more audiobooks but I try to mostly use the library – audiobooks are expensive! The other way we got a free audiobook for this last road trip was by signing up for an Audible membership. I signed up, got my free book, and then cancelled. The books are really expensive from Audible in Canada: some Harry Potter books were $40 CDN even after the Audible membership discount.
Are we noticing a difference with our kids not having screen time?
Back to the screen free update: yes, our kids are different without the screen time. They are much better at finding something to engage with on their own. Their creative play comes easier and seems to be deeper. They have more elaborate made up games. They move more: simply chasing each other outside is a frequent go to activity.
I’m also parenting differently without the screens as a crutch. Errands and small tasks I would usually do on my own are now an activity or something to be spun into kids learning a new skill. I’m pushing my eight year old to take on more household chores… and he’s showing me he’s quite capable of it.
Is this more work? YES. I don’t want to shy away from that side of taking our television away from the summer. It certainly is more work. We arrived home from our road trip on a Friday evening and the weekend seemed to stretch on and on. We were all tired and I wanted nothing more than to turn the television on in the afternoon and have a nap or a moment to myself. Instead, we turned feeding my brother’s cats into an outing and played a lot of Uno and baked cookies. I’m hoping that this screen free summer not only teaches the kids that they can play deeper and be more creative without screens, I’m hoping it teaches me all of that too.
I don’t know about your library but in Calgary we can get a free Hoopla account and get three books a month (or movies, audiobooks etc) for free. They just launched another one through OverDrive called Libby but I haven’t checked it out yet. I often download 3 audiobooks from Hoopla for the kids when we go on road trips. We never watch anything in the car – and we will do the 8 hour drive from Calgary to Kelowna (with lots of stops making it more like a 9.5 hour drive) without a screen and with the kids having very little to do. We didn’t want to have screens in the car to begin with but because F has such terrible motion sickness screens exacerbate it so they are definitely banned for us. 😉 Her sisters understand so it isn’t an issue. (M, on the other hand, can sit in the very back of the van and read the entire way – I’m not sure even my stomach could handle that.)
Oh to be able to read in the car! I can barely look at my phone for directions sitting in the front passenger seat. The kids take after me so in addition to Gravol, when they did get screen time in the car we’d have to get them all to take look up/forward every ten minutes.
I’ll look up Libby through OverDrive – thanks!
This is SO helpful! We have a similar trip planned in a couple of weeks, I need to go on the library website ASAP to see about audiobooks! Thank you!
Great comments too – lots of helpful tips! Good luck on your trip.
We are able to upload audio books into our vehicle’s system so, luckily, my kid likes hearing the same one over and over. We discovered Radio Classics on Sirius and that’s now her favorite station. It’s old radio shows 24/7. Now she even wants to hear them when we go across this tiny town.
This summer has been full of back and forth trips tithe city, 4 hours away, and she’s been content in the back seat with the radio.
Thanks for sharing another useful road trip tool. My husband used to have satellite radio when he drove a lot and we loved listening to comedy shows. They really had everything!
8 hours is NOT a long drive day. LOL Okay, I know it’s different for everyone. Our normal drive days are 16 hours, so screens are a MUST, but we do limit them with some rules. No screens while eating for one. (The last thing we need is multi-tasking in the car when the possibility of “I’m bored” is just around the corner.) No screens for first “leg” of the trip (about 3-4 hours, while it’s still mostly dark outside–they’re supposed to go back to sleep but they never do any more!). Screens usually only go on for 60-90 minutes, and are then ended for a long stretch of coloring, or reading, or an audiobook–hopefully followed by naps for everyone!
16 hours!!!! I’m physically wrecked from 8 hours now so we actually split it up over two days on this last trip. When I was younger it wasn’t as a big deal to my body to sit for that long but now… ugh. Takes me a week to recover.
Thanks for sharing your road trip rules 🙂
I will admit that I fell off of following you… really when I needed you most. I remember when you started this journey and a post about drowning under all the baby stuff. And here I am now- drowning. So I’m back. (Thank you for waiting for me 😉 ) I’m trying not to start with the screens, but since baby two and mostly solo- I’ve been using it as a crutch. (Pre baby she was almost screen free except for dads visits and grammas house. I’m away and used it yesterday, but I’m going to try to commit to no more (for them) for two weeks.
Everything is a season. I really used screens when we went to two kids (and again when third arrived). They can be very useful when you’re glued to a couch with a newborn! And when you’re parenting solo. *Did ten months of that, 3 weeks on solo, 1 week with spouse home.
Be kind to yourself and set really small attainable goals. Good luck!!
Have you looked into libravox? It’s free! They have mostly classics but it’s volunteers reading books outloud. There are also a ton of great podcasts out there now! Brains on! Wow in the world, storynory, the Mayan crystal, sparklestories.
Librivox is awesome!
Love podcasts – thanks for the kid’s recs. They haven’t listened to podcasts yet but that’s another great idea. And I’ll checkout Libravox.
I am glad that this experiment has worked for you. Will you carry on into the school year or modify it this Fall?
My husband and I are in discussion on this. I would love to not have the television in our living room. Our oldest really loves playing Minecraft on the television so that’s our big tripping point. Now I know the kids can survive a leisurely Saturday morning without cartoons so… I have to figure it out!