Speaker 1Today I am giving you one rule for screens this summer. One rule that stops the arguments, holds the boundary and, I promise you, will not make you the villain. If you have been going round in circles about screen time, today I am cutting through it. I'm Dr Mary Henn and this is how not to screw up your kids. Let us make this super practical. Now on Thursday we talked about the connection between screens, sleep and your child's mood. Specifically, the three mechanisms by which screens disrupt sleep and why a tired child looks like a difficult child. Now if you've not yet listened to this video, please do so now. If you haven't listened to it, it definitely is worth going back to. There's lots of useful tips in there and I explain the science behind it so that you can understand more than just simply the behaviour. Now for this episode, the bucket emptying episode, I want to give you one rule. Not five, not a whole screen time policy, but one rule which you can introduce for the rest of the summer without becoming the person your child complains about. But also creating a rule that is so much more straightforward and practical to work with that you're much more likely to stick to it and keep the consistency that we know is so crucial to maintaining good screen habits. Now, here's the thing about screen time rules in the summer and why sometimes adopting a different approach is really helpful. It's because in the summer holidays, the usual structure that our children get from their school is that they need to have a screen time. What I'm here to do is give you one straightforward, easy-to-apply rule and tool which improves things without requiring you to become a full-time screen monitor. Because let's face it, that is almost impossible to do whilst we're juggling all the other things and our children simply have a lot more opportunity and convenience. So here is the rule. The rule is screens after, not instead of. That's it. Not a time limit, not an app with a timer, not a point system, just one principle. Whatever your child would have done on that day, whether that's moved their body, played outside, created something, gone to a workshop, spent some time with people, they do that first and screens come after. Now, you might be asking, well, Mary-Anne, what's the difference between no screen times until yesterday? You've done X. You know, why is it different? You know, it sounds to me like the same thing. You're just using different words. You could argue that, but I would argue it is because when we position it as screens after instead of no screens until, we position it not as a punishment or even a transaction. It's actually, in essence, a sequencing principle. We're not saying that screens are bad. What we're saying is. We do the other important things first and then screens are there for you. And here is the bucket connection. Your child's bucket is most at risk of filling up with boredom, frustration and relentlessness and restlessness in summer. Movement, creativity, play, social time, outdoor time, all of these empty the bucket naturally. Screens, therefore, when they're used. Constructively and at the right time, and certainly if you're new to coming to this concept about bucket emptying, I really, really would encourage you to listen to the episode, which has a video attached to it on our YouTube channel. How not to screw up your kids, because that really helps explain it. Being on devices themselves do not empty the bucket for our children. Often they feel that that is their ability to decompress. But in more cases than not, it presses pause. Particularly when their bucket is. Already full. If we've got a sequencing shift and instead our children start with all of the things that are important in terms of engagement, in terms of curiosity and resilience, perseverance, capability, all of those things happen first. Their bucket has been emptied before they do the device time. And so the device time can then act a little bit more like a decompression than it would do when our children do the. Device time first. And so basically, once they've emptied their bucket naturally, screens can then be used at the right time and with the right amount. They can genuinely be on an empty bucket restorative. The problem comes when screens displace the other things because then the bucket never gets properly emptied. Now, I want to give you three tools to help you make this work, because you may be simply thinking, Mary, that's far too simple. You don't know what's going on in my household. That just it's just too simple. I can't see it working. If you put these tools in place, they will help you and give you the best possible chance of this really working. So tool number one is the morning or the evening two minutes, whatever works better for you. I would do it in the evening and the morning just because that's the way that I am. And I like I do tend to like a bit of a belts and braces approach. We can't always manage that. But each. Each evening or each morning, what we want to do is just have a two minute conversation. It's not a lecture. We're not going to go into long spiel, but simply what are we doing tomorrow? What are we doing today? What is the plan before screens? And then you pass it over to your child. You can help them if they are stuck and maybe there isn't a plan. Maybe you've got a day at home and they can't think of anything. Then you may well be able to help them. But we want them to get into that tune. And it doesn't we don't need to elaborate on it for very long. It could be a swim. Maybe they're going to help with lunch. Maybe they're going to have an hour playing outside a walk to the shop. Whatever is reasonable for them to do. The point is that the other stuff is named and agreed before the screen goes on. Vague rules of do something before screens is really easy for them to circumvent. Specific agreements are much harder to argue. For example, it might sound something like this. So, right. We said or you said you are going to go to have a go at that bike ride and then help me with lunch. Once those are done, screens are all yours. So it's not a long lecture. But what we're doing is we're positioning the things that happen before screen time, saying it out loud, which is why I like to do that the night before and then consolidate in the morning so that we've got a double opportunity for them to really consolidate what's happening. So that is tool number one, which will help reinforce and help make that happen. The second one is let natural endpoints do the work. So we don't need to police how long screens are on. What we need is a natural end point that the screens stop before, whether that's family time, whether that's dinner, whether that's the 90 minute wind down before bed that we talked about on Thursday. These end points already exist in your day. And if they don't, you can put those in. So we're not creating new rules. We're just simply using the structure that we already have within our home to use that as a boundary for when screens are off. So we might say things like screens off when dinner is ready. That is not a screen time rule. It's just a household rule. You have a rule in your house where when you eat dinner, there are no screens. So it's a much more straightforward one to implement. And the key is that the end point is a non-negotiable and should be applied consistently, not in a minute and not after this episode. When dinner is ready, for example, when family time is happening, when that walk that you're all doing happens, the screen stop, full stop. And the more consistently you hold this, the less you have to fight about because the rule is clear and reliable. Now, what you might find. Is that you might need to consider what those rules are going to be. It may be at the moment that you don't have any very specific end points or that it's quite tricky because you've not, you know, your work pattern maybe means that you've not been able to necessarily establish that. So just think about what those are going to be, because the more that those are embedded and put in place. And this is often why managing screens during term time and when our children are at school are often much more straightforward. Because the time. Is and the boundaries that are there are much more straightforward. They have homework, they have activities, they've got dinner. and the time that they have in between is very limited. So tool number two is let the natural end points that you have work for you. And then the third one, as you might expect, is model it yourself. Now, I know that nobody wants to hear this one, but it is the most powerful thing, I believe, on the whole list. Because we know our children are watching what we do with our phone, with our iPad, with our laptop. They're watching us as closely, if not more closely, than they are listening to what we say about theirs. So if we're scrolling and just sending one last email, and I'm just going to finish what I was doing, while telling them to put their devices down, we've already lost the argument. Even if, in that moment, they comply. We need to demonstrate that that hard stop is a hard stop, and none of this, just in a minute, this is my fault. This is important. So this summer, try having a shared screen-free time. Now, it may well be that you already have meals as that, but maybe a chunk of the afternoon, maybe an evening walk. Not because phones are evil in terms of our positioning, but because it models the principle in action. We do, as a family, the important things first, the things that matter to our connection and our sense of that family. We do those things first, and we are present for each other and with each other, and then we go back to our screens. You do not have to be perfect at this. None of us are, but being seen trying matters enormously to children. Now, the thing I love most about this particular rule is what it is not. It is not a punishment. It is not a battle about minutes. It is not a technology management system. It is a way of keeping children safe. It is a way of keeping the good stuff in your summer while letting screens be the enjoyable thing they are after everything else. And if your child pushes back, the answer is simple. We're not saying no to screens. We are just doing this first. And most of the time, that is enough. Now, this Thursday is A-level results day, and I want every parent listening to feel ready for it. And whether you are expecting A-level results or not for your child, maybe you are not. But if you are, then you maybe you've got the GCSE results coming out the week later, or maybe you've got some important exams coming up that your child will be taking, this episode will be for you, because I'm going to give you the words which help and the ones to hold back. I'll see you on Thursday. That's everything for today. So be as kind to yourself as you're trying to be to your children. You don't have to get it right every time. And the fact that you're here learning and growing already says a lot. For more episodes and all the resources to support you, head to drmaryhan.com. I'm Dr. Mary Han. Take good care of yourself. I'll see you on Thursday.
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