Reply to Do you block your teens screens?

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "Do you block your teens screens?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We did. We set total limits per day (3 hours) and blocked out certain times to make sure homework got done and then before bedtime. We did it via an app. Yes - there were tremendous meltdowns. I would expect them. The most important thing is not to give in to them and ignore as best as possible.[/quote]

At what age? Were there no limits before that? Is the limit only phone or no screens at all, and how long did it take before your kid adjusted?[/quote]

We did it at 15. There were no hard limits before that and it had become a tremendous anxiety avoidance habit. The phone was the biggest problem, but when we limited the phone, DD turned to TV watching so we extended it to that (kept the remotes locked up). It took awhile to adjust, mostly because the habit was driven by anxiety and facing the anxiety then became the difficult task. It was *very* intense for a few weeks and we had other sporadic blowups for a few months - coinciding when anxiety was elevated. DD had a therapist who was working on that and we had a therapist helping us with our part in things. Basically, allowing the unlimited access was accommodating the anxiety, along with other things we were doing, so we worked on removing all of the ways we were accommodating anxiety. Having therapist support for us during this time was really helpful.[/quote]

Thanks. This sounds very similar to our situation. We have limited before and not stuck to it, so that makes it even harder. Is your child Autistic?

Frankly I’m worried about personally handling the meltdowns. I have a full time demanding job, as does my spouse who is not home much (I work from home) and we have another child. I know that avoiding meltdowns is not a good reason to not do what we need to do for our kid, but I’m talking screaming, throwing things, swearing, punching herself in the head, threatening self harm, etc. The last time we did this it was major crisis for at least a month. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics