970x125
Harry, 7, came home from school every day a complete mess. It was one explosion after another. Total stress and chaos. No chance for connection or joy as a family. His mom, Kristen, had tried everything: she stayed calm; she tried to talk to him about his feelings; she tried a range of strategies to help him calm down. Nothing worked. Most strategies backfired, increasing Harry’s dysregulation.
Kristen took a step back and reflected on what she knows about Harry: He is a very sensitive and intense child, and by the end of a long day at school, he is fried. He has far surpassed his threshold for coping and needs to zone out completely. The screen provides that.
She was trying to stick to the limit of 60 minutes a day, based on what her pediatrician and popular parenting accounts had deemed the maximum, lest you harm your child. However, her thoughtful assessment of Harry told her it wasn’t sufficient. He needed more time. While conflicted, Kristen started letting Harry watch up to two straight hours of only appropriate content before dinner.
The outcome
After the two hours of TV, for the rest of the night, Harry is a total delight—calm and content. They now have lovely evenings filled with connection and (minimal) chaos. Sensitive, responsive, not “permissive” parenting tunes in to your child and makes thoughtful decisions about what they need to maximize healthy functioning—whatever that looks like for them.
The point of this story is not to let your child watch two straight hours a day. Your decisions about screen time and every other facet of your child’s life should be informed by science and adapted to your child’s unique needs.
To do that, consider the impact of your response.
If what you’re doing helps your child build skills and cope more effectively over time, it’s supportive.
If what you’re doing helps your child avoid developing those skills—especially because you’re trying to prevent a tantrum by lowering expectations they can actually meet—it’s more likely to be enabling.
Take the screen time dilemma
For Harry, this decision was supportive because he was able to participate in family dinner, get through bedtime tasks, and enjoy reading and cuddle time. In the cost-benefit analysis this mom made, there was way more benefit.
For another child, letting them watch two consecutive hours of TV every day may be enabling. They can come home after school and engage with friends, play on their own, or participate in an extracurricular because their system is not overloaded. But they would prefer to sit in front of a screen for hours and so beg for that. Acquiescing in that case may be enabling, as it’s a missed opportunity for that child to experience more fortifying activities.
Perhaps the most important take-homes for me from this story
1) There is no one-size-fits-all approach to child-rearing. Rigid dictates have been very harmful to the families I work with who have highly reactive children. In addition to feeling harshly judged for their child’s often outsized and seemingly irrational behavior, they often feel like their hands are tied because what they instinctively know their child needs is counter to popular, “accepted” parenting practices.
2) Don’t judge a parent until you’ve walked in their shoes.
