Chat with my neighbor's kid made me rethink how I handle my own kid's screen time

So I'm at the park last Saturday and this 10 year old kid (my neighbor's son) starts telling me how his dad lets him play games for 4 hours straight on weekends. He said it's cool because they 'bond over Fortnite' or whatever. I've been super strict with my 8 year old, like 1 hour max, and I always feel guilty when I say no. But hearing that kid talk about it made me wonder if I'm being too rigid. Why do I assume more screen time is automatically bad? Maybe I should try playing with her instead of just timing it. Has anyone else loosened up on rules after seeing how other parents do it?

3 comments

3 Comments

joel_clark371mo ago

Dude I loosened up after my sister let her 7 year old watch horror movie trailers on YouTube. My first thought was "that's gonna mess him up" but he turned out fine and now he's super into space stuff from the algorithm. Now my kid watches whatever as long as I can hear it from the kitchen.

markh851mo ago

Yeah man, solidarity on that. Kids are tougher than we give them credit for sometimes. As long as they're not having nightmares, it's probably fine.

hall.joel1mo ago

Oh man, I feel this in my bones. My neighbor lets his kid watch pretty much anything on YouTube and I was the same way, real strict about it. Then my daughter started asking why she couldn't watch the same stuff and I felt like a total fun-killer. I eased up a bit and started watching some of her favorite gaming channels with her, and honestly it's been way better. We actually talk about what's happening in the videos instead of me just counting down the minutes. You might be surprised how much you can connect once you stop treating screen time like a timer you have to win against.