Kindergarten parents - how much screen time are your kids getting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Still no screen time except for zoom meeting with her teacher and helping me upload her school work at the end of the day. She’s in a private school that doesn’t allow the kids recreational screen time. And they are keeping with this even during this shutdown.

Sick!

[Anonymous]

On the weekdays my 4.5 year old gets 30-45 min of instructional videos from her school and maybe a 20 minute Zoom call with her class 3 days a week. Outside of school related videos she gets maybe 30 minutes a few days a week to do Yoga or watch storytime. On the weekends she gets 1-2 hrs total to watch a favorite show or a movie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Still no screen time except for zoom meeting with her teacher and helping me upload her school work at the end of the day. She’s in a private school that doesn’t allow the kids recreational screen time. And they are keeping with this even during this shutdown.

Same but we have the luxury of a nanny.

[Anonymous]

He has daily Zoom class in morning, usually 30 minutes but occasionally longer. Most days he has either a "special" or office hours with the teacher; that's another 30 mins. The school also assigns homework which requires watching a video (although DH previews the math ones and doesn't make DS watch it if it's long and repetitive and he already understands it; in that case he just does the post-video assignment). So let's call that 15 minutes daily. We also allow 30 minutes of a so-called educational app daily, like ABCya. DS and his 3 year old sister get one hour of TV while I cook dinner. This used to be weekends only but now is daily. So for the 3 year old that's 1 hour per day; for the 5 year old it's close to 3 hours of a screen per day. Not counting Zoom calls with grandparents and Zoom play dates, usually twice a week for 30 mins or so.

It's a huge increase over the previous screen time which was zilch on weekdays. But what can you do. DH and I both are working from home, switching off shifts to watch the kids. It's working ok. Exhausting but we have it better than most. The kids play well together and get an hour of "recess" outdoors in the morning and anywhere from 15 minutes to another hour in the late afternoon, depending on weather. Mostly in our small yard. Not the same as a big playground, alas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All the screens all day. Even if I get a break from work, I'm exhausted.

I felt bad until I realized that, in the end, this will be a blip in their lives. They will be fine. Habits are easy to break at young ages. And the struggle of breaking the tv habit is still less than the struggle without tv right now.

YES!!! Thank you!!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 year old gets 30 min show in the morning while I wake up and drink coffee, 30 minute show while I cook dinner. If there were no behavior issues, 20-30 min of Noggin app or PBSKids games on iPad after dinner. Any more than that, I feel like a horrible mother.

Uh-huh. And are you working during the day?

Yep! And I have a 9 year old who needs a lot of help with her homework. 💪🏻

[Anonymous]

Kids are 3 and 5. We both work. Aside from an occasional video call with grandparents, our kids don’t have screens, but this isn’t any different from life before covid, so adding screens now would probably just make everything harder. We’re doing our best to keep life as normal as possible for them.

[Anonymous]

Honestly I’m jealous of the families that can give their kids lots of screen time and not have it turn into a sh*tshow. At our house, more screen time means grumpier kids, more tantrums, whining and incessant asks for more screen time. I limit it because I can’t tolerate it because our kids turn into gremlins.