Screen time is not an alien concept for younger kids anymore. I am a mother of a four years old daughter. From a mother who struggled to keep her kid away from over usage of electronic gadgets to one who has a sorted plan of how the day would work out without or limited screen time, I have been a part of both sides of the spectrum. There was a time when my little one would not open her mouth to have food unless she had a phone in front of her.
After due effort in making changes with our routine, I have not only managed to keep her away from gadgets but also set our routine to keep her busy with other activities in her free time. Let me just start by saying, there is nothing wrong with supervised, limited screen time however, we can’t deny the presence of gadget addiction in today’s world.
We are a nuclear family and I completely understand the problems one faces to keep our always active kids busy with creative activities. Here are a few small changes we can start with so our kids can easily enjoy the free time well:
Take baby steps towards changing the little one’s routine
If one day you wake up to decide to abruptly change the routine of your little one, it won’t work. We have to understand that these little humans are a ball of emotion, feelings and behavioral changes which they are still learning to express well. Take baby steps towards any changes; start with 10 or 15 minutes of a new habit.
When my little one was a year old and was teething, she stopped eating completely. All I wanted was to feed her well. I tried everything and then gave in to rhymes on my phone just to make sure that she eats well. She ate but we fell into this trap of screen and mealtime. It took us some time to make her understand that mealtime is family time and no screens are allowed at the table but it didn’t happen in a day.
Stick to the routine and cut down your own phone usage
Allocate an appropriate amount of screen time for your child, irrespective of the gadget. We can’t preach if we don’t follow so make sure to cut down your own phone usage. I am guilty of using my phone for more than 9 hours a day, I didn’t even realize because I was on different apps and never-ending scrolling was messing up with my behavior too. Â
Set some ground rules and stick to those – expect few tantrums from yourself (phone addiction is real) and the little one too. For me downloading an app to check my phone usage gave me a reality check. When your little one will see you busy with books or something else that you love, he/she will follow in your footsteps. Â
Activity boxes and pretend play activities
This is one of my go-to options when I run out of ideas on how to keep my little one busy creatively.  When I decided to cut down on our phone usage, the biggest trouble was how to keep her busy. Kids’ attention spans are really short so we have to come up with interesting activities quite often. My search took me to Firstcry Intellikit boxes. To be honest, I love these activities more than my little one as it gives us a chance to spend some quality time together without a screen. I have taken a subscription for Firstcry Intellikit boxes after I saw how helpful it is to keep my little one busy with creative activities.
When I got to know about their #nocreendaycampaign, I knew I made the right choice. The “No Screen Day” campaign is an attempt to help moms reduce their child’s screen time by asking them to pledge a #noscreenday for their child.
We thoroughly enjoyed our #noscreenday with so many activities and I am so glad she didn’t ask for a phone even once (Yay, for this mama).
To read the complete blog please click here. This blog was originally published on Firstcry.com.
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This is a sponsored post by FIrstcry Intellikit but all views are mine. I have personally used the products and reviewed it on my experience.
Awesome activity list…
Great tips. I have tried activity boxes and have a good experience with them.
Keeping kids away from screens is a task. Thanks for sharing this helpful tips
my saviour has been pretend plays and play dates. I send him off for play dates, or ask his friends to come home to keep my son away from screen. These are beautiful tips you have mentioned.
These are some really wonderful tips to help your child say goodbye to screen time and indulge in some other fun activities. Firstcry Intellikit is an amazing activity box, perfect to encourage play-based learning.
Intellikit is our fav too. And we resort to it every week. You have shared some good ideas to keep kids off screens.
Activity boxes, drawings/painting activities, etc does help a lot…I sometimes ask my daughter to declutter her toys and it keeps her busy for over 30 mins.
Our kids follow us, if we can keep away from screen so will they. We need to invest time. Great tips shared by you.
I loved your ways of pulling the kid off the screen especially the intellikits they truly are awesome buddy
Great tips. I also want to try for my kids as I never tried before but heard a lot about Intellkid activity box.
Firstcry intellikit is definitely a good activity box to engage kids for a longer time period . these days my son also loving doing the activities given inside the intellikit
Completely agree, we can’t make a change in a single day. Slowly we have to give them options so that they leave their screen time.
Firstcry Intellikit is definitely a really fabulous way to engage kids, without any screen time
That’s really true we need to change if we want our kids to do the same. I have used this activity kit and it’s really good for kids
Great tips and I agree that managing screen time is big challenge. I had also tried first cry activity boxes and had great experience with it.
True, before we change our little one behaviour we should work on ourselves. Even I scroll a lot Instagram and other social.media that’s the reason kids ask for more of gadget.