What if ¼ of your child’s year was spent without screens? What would it look like for your family if you set aside your kid’s devices for three months out of the year and replaced screen time with an emphasis on relationships, play, productivity, and rest?
Doing a screen free season is a lot simpler than it might sound. Over the years, our family has done several screen free summers. Each of them have been incredibly rewarding. In this post, I have digital detox tips that you can tailor to your specific child. Whether you want to do a 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or even a 3 month seasonal break from screens like we do, these ideas can help you accomplish your goals.
As a mom of four, I have found it so much easier to eliminate screen time altogether for a time than to manage it on a daily basis. For my kids, devices out of vision has meant devices out of memory. They don’t ask for screen time when they don’t see me scrolling.
When screen time has been a daily option for my kids…
- They constantly ask for more
- They complain when it is over
- They have trouble transferring to new activities
- They struggle with imaginative and independent play
- They say “I’m bored” and “Can I watch a show?” A LOT
Why is digital detox so important?
In contrast to the many negative side effects kids experience after excessive screen time, when we have taken screens completely off of the table for a season, we have noticed….
- Their behavior vastly improves
- Their imaginations blossom
- They pursue creative projects
- They develop new skills
- Their attention spans increase
- Their appetite for good things grows
- They form healthier habits
- They are more joyful
- They thrive
Limiting screen time for kids through a seasonal break from devices is totally doable.
As a stay at home mom, I know how great the temptation is to rely on the electronic babysitter in order to get a break or get things done. But I have learned from lots of trial and error that parenting is way harder when screen time is a daily option. After the initial adjustment that comes from weaning kids off screens, things get easier. Children learn how to play again, appreciate the outdoors, and entertain themselves in healthy ways!
Whether you are interested in doing a digital detox for kids for a short or long period, you will find plenty of tips in this post of how to keep your kids busy without screen time.
Detox Tips
- Make plans with friends for the first couple days of your child’s tech detox. Plan a playdate to a local playground, go on a Saturday hike, play mini golf one evening with a group, and arrange a family friendly game night with easy snacks at your house. These events will keep your kids busy and happily distracted from the detox process, especially if they are used to lots of time on tech.
- Start new habits to replace screen time. Did your kids used to play video games while you prepped dinner? Get them involved in the kitchen instead. Did they used to play tablet games before school? Start taking a morning walk, rain or shine. In the colder months, bundle up, bring an umbrella, and get all the benefits of fresh air and exercise first thing in the morning.
- Replace screen time with reading. Read aloud to your kids, have your kids read independently, schedule time for older siblings to read to younger siblings when you need to get things done, and let your kids listen to audiobooks. In my book (pun intended), audiobooks do not count as screen time so long as kids are doing a hands on activity or relaxing and simply listening, not starring at the device playing the story. If you are using an electronic device to play audiobooks, hook it up to a wireless Bluetooth speaker instead of handing your child the device. A screen free book option is books on CD (yes, those still exist – you can get them at the library.)
How do I get my kids off screens?
Remove your child’s access to electronic devices. Take the chargers and the technology. Let it die and hide it in places your kids can’t access it.
Replace your child’s time online with family bonding activities, outdoor play, reading, audiobooks, sibling play, chores, and time with peers.
Set clear boundaries for days and timeframes that screen time is simply not an option. Children will learn to adapt to new tech rules and begin to make their own fun once devices are out of the equation.
On the other hand, if the TV is always on, the tablet is fully charged, and the video game console is set up in their bedroom, it will be hard for them to desire to do anything else. Screens pull kids in like a magnet. Help your kids do a digital detox by fully removing electronic devices for several weeks. After that, decide if screen time has a place in their young lives and set firm boundaries accordingly. Personally, I believe the longer you keep young children off of screens, the better.
How can I help my child with digital detox?
- Choose a period of time for your child’s screen detox. This could be one day, one week, 2 to 4 weeks, or an entire season such as a screen free summer.
- Decide which electronic devices will be off limits during your child’s digital detox. You might choose to remove a smartphone, tablet, iPad, video game console, laptop, or television. You might want to cancel certain streaming services or delete social media and gaming apps. Some parents remove all devices during a screen detox, while others remove only the ones that cause the most behavioral problems but still allow small amounts of television.
- Come up with positive things for your child to look forward to during their break from screens such as playdates, meals with friends, quality time dates with you, new books to read, board games to play with their siblings, and extracurricular activities. If your child’s digital detox is short term, look into low commitment activities that don’t require you to sign up for more than a weekend.
- Be sympathetic and understanding. Listen to your child. Share your own struggles to keep technology in check and how you are working to set proper boundaries even as an adult. Do a digital detox with your kids. Walk alongside them.
Simple Weekend Activities To Keep Kids Busy Without Screens
- Some Home Depot stores have a monthly workshop for kids to build things.
- Many bake shops have weekend baking classes for aspiring young bakers.
- Craft stores usually offer arts and crafts days for kids.
- Some yarn shops offer pay as you go low-commitment knitting and crocheting lessons.
- Libraries almost always have something going on for children.
What should children do instead of screen time?
Getting kids off screens does not have to be complicated. You don’t have to come up with elaborate activities to entertain your children and you don’t have to commit a lot of time and money to extracurricular activities (although there’s nothing wrong with doing that if that is your unique family culture and that works well for you!)
We have a big family and we like to keep things simple. Play is crucial for young developing children and screen time ought to be replaced with lots of it. In addition, time in nature is soothing to the soul. The outdoors is a child’s first playground. It’s the best place for exercise, exploration, and fun to happen on a daily basis. Most humans feel mentally lighter after time outside.
I have a post all about the importance of play for children linked below if you want to learn more about replacing screen time with recreation during your kid’s screen detox.
Our Digital Detox
A digital detox is one of the easiest ways we have found to reduce screen time, rebuild relationship, and redeem the time we have been given with our family.
Grab my free printable Screen Free Family Bingo Challenge to connect with your loved ones today!
This past summer, our four kids spent a total of zero minutes playing video games, iPad games, tablet games, smartphone games, or using “educational” apps on electronic devices.
During our digital detox, the kids watched a grand total of zero movies.
At home, we did not watch any shows from early June to late August.
There was one afternoon during the summer where a show was on during a visit to someone else’s home. The kids watched a few minutes of it while also visiting with our relatives and it was no big deal.
Limiting screen time for our kids has been a journey. Tech certainly has its place in our modern world, but we have seen firsthand the way our family relationships suffer when tech use gets out of whack.
We believe that tech is best used as a tool in moderation, not something that should occupy hours upon hours of our time or take away from family relationships and time outdoors.
Unfortunately, for most people today, tech is less like a tool and more like a master that demands most of their focus.
So what can you do to limit screen time for your kids? And how did we do an entirely screen free summer with our four young kids without losing our minds as parents? Here are some simple ideas…
How to Limit Screen Time for Kids
The easiest and most effective way to limit screen time for kids is to remove the temptation altogether. If devices are always out in view, kids will flock to them. So will adults for that matter.
However, if the streaming services are temporarily cancelled, the apps are deleted, the iPads are stashed away in an obscure basement drawer, and the video game console just happens to go missing, you can eliminate at least half of the battle for most kids.
Out of sight, out of mind is our general rule for screens.
Another way to limit screen time in your household is by developing a daily routine your kids can count on. When children are bored and unsure of what to do, screens become all the more enticing. However, when their days are filled up with good things, they are less likely to seek entertainment from digital sources.
Kids with really good routines have better things to do than stare at screens all day long.
In our home, we reduce screen time drastically by including the following activities in our children’s daily schedule:
- Independent reading
- Family read aloud time
- Educational activities
- Unstructured play
- Outdoor exploration
- Memorization practice
- Consistent chores
- Skill development
- Sibling bonding time
- Creative projects
- Quality time dates with Mom
You can also decrease screen time for your children by helping them to set goals for themselves and then giving them the time and space to accomplish those goals. Working toward productive goals is an excellent alternative to screen time.
Here are some sample goal ideas for kids:
- Help your child excel at playing an instrument by giving them a morning and an evening chunk of time to practice.
- Spur your kid on in their basketball skills by requiring them to shoot hoops in the driveway for fifteen minutes a day.
- Improve your child’s swimming ability by making sure they practice a couple times a week.
- Encourage your kid to finish a knitting project by having them set a ten minute kitchen timer and knitting a little bit each day.
- Require your child to finish that story they’ve been dreaming up by giving them a window of time to write every afternoon. Set a timer and remind them to write.
- Inspire your kid to continue developing their natural artistic abilities by requiring them to create one new picture per day and providing How to Draw books.
- Help your child improve in academics by asking them to complete a certain amount of workbook pages every morning after some free play outdoors.
- Have your child practice tying their shoes twice a day until they master the skill.
- Help your child practice communication and social skills by setting up frequent playdates or dinners with other families. Require your kids to look people in the eye and ask them one question about themselves. Reward them with lots of praise as they progress in this essential skill.
Setting goals is motivating for adults and children.
My kids love to see their progress as they grow in knitting, writing, and their athletic abilities in backyard sports. When we make the intentional choice to decrease screen time, we are a lot more likely to fill our free hours with productive goals and positive habits.
How We Did a 3 Month Tech Detox
Blessed Boredom
We allowed our kids to be bored sometimes. Boredom is a good thing! A person who can be still with their own thoughts without reaching for a device to distract them is a healthy individual.
A child who gets creative and inventive when there’s “nothing to do” is a blessing to their parent.
When we allow screens to be a constant option, our kids begin to expect an endless stress of entertainment. Technology kids often lack the skills necessary to make their own fun and succeed in unstructured play.
Do yourself a favor as a mom and let your kids be bored! Don’t run to their rescue with a device or an elaborate activity every time they feel the natural discomfort of boredom. Allow your children to figure it out.
If your little one is having trouble with independent play, try reading them these books before requiring a time of outdoor exploration. These are our family’s favorite picture books to stimulate imagination and creative play.
- Roxaboxen
- Christina Katerina and the Box
- Flora’s Treehouse
Exercise
When screen time was off the table, our kids rode bikes, swung on swings, went swimming, took walks, played basketball, raced each other, tossed a football, served a volleyball, kicked around a soccer ball, and jumped on the trampoline.
While passive time on tech promotes a sedentary lifestyle, a break from screens spurs children on to the kind of healthy movement their developing bodies need.
Screen time for children often acts as a catalyst to behavioral issues, irritability, restlessness, tantrums, and laziness.
Exercise for kids, on the other hand, relieves stress, improves mood, reduces the risk of disease, helps them maintain a healthy body weight, and builds strong muscles.
Exercise through natural outdoor play is one of the very best screen free activities for kids.
Writing
Writing isn’t just for school time. During our digital detox, my kids…
- Mailed letters to friends and family
- Created a neighborhood newspaper
- Copied sentences from great literature
- Worked on stories of their own
- Wrote journal entries about their days
- Came up with their own creative poetry
Requiring your children to write recreationally is an excellent way to reduce screen time and equip them with skills that will benefit them in school and their future careers. Employers are looking for individuals who can communicate well orally and on paper.
Requiring daily writing and giving your kid a pencil and a notebook will set them above their peers who are being handed an iPad in their spare time.
Writing is at least a small aspect of most modern jobs. Whether your child will have to write essays in school or frequent emails and reports in their future career, they will benefit from being a strong and capable writer. This begins at home with little opportunities to write each day.
As an English major and a bookworm, writing has been one of my favorite screen free activities to pass on to my kids.
If writing is not your thing, but you want your children to acquire the skill, grab them the Question a Day Journal for Kids from Amazon. It’s a great place to start! In this journal, kids are invited to answer light and enjoyable questions about themselves and their preferences. I ask my child who uses this book to answer 2 questions a day in their very best handwriting and then read their answers aloud to me.
Chores
Instead of vegging out on electronic devices, we practiced being good stewards of our home together.
Limiting screen time for kids is an excellent opportunity to help your children develop healthy habits and learn new skills. What is your kid old enough to start doing? Can they tidy up the playroom? Help you cook dinner? Unload the dishwasher? Fold a load of dry towels? Feed the chickens? Sweep the floor? Empty the bathroom trash bin into the larger trash can at the end of the day?
Chores for kids promotes responsibility.
When kids learn how to do things for themselves, they become more capable and confident human beings.
While kids who are addicted to screens often behave helplessly, as if they need a constant stream of entertainment to function, and they need Mom to bring them a TV tray full of snacks while they watch their shows, kids who do chores learn independence, hard work, and time management skills. A digital detox is the perfect time to teach your capable ones how to contribute to the family unit and do good old fashioned chores.
Screen free activities don’t always have to be entertaining. Chores count as a very meaningful way for kids to spend some of their time. Most of the chores my kids do take less than ten minutes.
Memory Work
Kids are always memorizing something, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Think of how quickly they pick up the theme songs from their favorite cartoons. What would you like your children to be memorizing instead?
Memorization promotes focus and provides mental exercise for the brain.
When kids memorize high quality passages of literature, poetry, or scripture, they are building up a bank of knowledge to draw from as they read, write, and communicate in the future.
As Christians, we place a high value on hiding the word of God in our hearts. The portions of scripture we have memorized have comforted us in hard times and encouraged us in everyday life.
While digital detoxing, our kids memorized several Mother Goose poems, two full chapters of scripture, and a cluster of bible verses from the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15. When I add up the lines we memorized, it totals 41 verses.
This was wasn’t the result of lengthly drilling. This memory work happened casually over breakfast, 3 to 5 minutes a day, over the course of a couple of months.
It is incredible to see how the brain of a child works like a sponge. Set intentional goals for memorization for your family and you will be surprised by what you are all capable of when electronic devices are not stealing mental space.
Memorization is a rich screen free activity with loads of cognitive benefits.
Gardening
Over the summer, each of our big kids planted and maintained their own flower garden. They also helped my husband plant, preserve, and harvest from several raised bed vegetable gardens in our backyard.
Gardening is good for the soul.
Gardening helps kids to learn about science in a hands-on way. This activity also encourages kids to try healthy foods, develop patience, grow in responsibility, and get a whole lot of vitamin D from the sunshine.
Lest you think that we are skilled homesteaders living off the land, let me assure you that we are not.
Gardening does not come naturally to us. After several years of gardening failures, we actually yielded a decent crop this past summer. The point of gardening as a family was not perfection. We desired to limit our kid’s screen time, get them outside, help them to be more comfortable in nature, and make memories together.
The gorgeous sunflowers and juicy tomatoes were just an added bonus.
To top off a summer full of hands-on science at our house, our kids also spent a couple of afternoons with their grandfather digging in the dirt and picking potatoes from his garden. “Pop Pop” is the actual green thumb in this family. He has rescued our wilting plants many times.
I am grateful that our kids spent so many minutes unplugged from tech this summer and learned gardening skills that will serve them for a lifetime from their dad and Pop Pop.
Books, Books, and More Books
During their tech detox, my kids read. A lot. Reading lowers stress, increases vocabulary, improves concentration, inspires play, and enhances active listening skills, just to name a few of the benefits that comes from time tangled up in a good story.
Unlike excessive screen time, reading offers so many positive benefits to children.
During our summer digital detox, I read aloud three different chapter books to my children as a group.
- Boxcar Children: The Beginning
- A True Home: Heartwood Hotel Book 1
- Finding Change
In addition to group reading time, my kids read many books on their own, listened to audiobooks, and we participated in a couple of book clubs. I also had an individual chapter book that I read individually with each of my big kids once a week. Plus, not many days go by that we don’t read a stack of picture books together.
Be sure to incorporate lots of great books into your digital detox for kids.
Plenty of Unstructured Play and Green Time
Unstructured play took up the bulk of our screen free summer. It was fun to watch my kids come up with their own fun together as siblings. Play does not always come easy to kids who are used to spending multiple hours per day on screens, but it is a crucial part of the screen detox process. Once you unplug your kids and give them room to figure it out, they will!
I am a huge proponent of time in nature for kids. Lots of outdoor exploration helps children to grow in the healthy ways they were meant to whereas too much time on tech hinders developing young minds.
Give your kids freedom to come up with their own screen free activities through play.
Kids were not meant to sit stagnantly for hours at a time starring into screens. They were made to climb trees, pick flowers, build forts, and explore. When we give children plenty of hours offline, they will find creative ways to fill their time.
Screen Free Hospitality
Everything is more fun with friends. During our break from tech, we hosted both new and old friends. We’ve had an ice cream social, a backyard barbecue, a taco Tuesday, a pool party, and a giant cookout with cousins.
Who in your life could you share a meal with during your family detox?
Think neighbors, church family, relatives, or friends you haven’t seen in a while. Ask your kids if they have a friend from school or sports that they would like to invite over. If cooking isn’t your thing, set up a family friendly game night with simple store bought snacks.
Educational Activities
We are a year round homeschooling family. We get some of our best schoolwork done in the summer when energy is high and the days are long. Even if you don’t homeschool, consider replacing screen time with educational activities to help your child keep up on necessary skills.
Turn baking, knitting, and Lego building into supplementary math.
Assign some reading. Invest in instrument lessons. There are so many ways for your children to learn without screens.
Quality Time Dates
Limiting screen time for my kids has shown me the importance of building relationship with them. Devices often cause division and discord in the family unit.
A home free of device distraction is a breeding ground for strong relationships.
As a mom of four, it is important to me to connect with my children one-on-one. I have tried lots of different ways of accomplishing this motherhood goal over the years.
This past summer, I found a couple of simple ways to spend quality time with my kids that worked well. Here are some easy ideas that might work for you too…
- Go on a frozen yogurt, snow cone, or ice cream date.
- Read through a book together, one chapter a week.
- Play a bored game. Our favorite is Guess Who.
- Choose one day of the week for Quality Time Dates during quiet rest time. Set a fifteen minute timer and do something special with each child, one at a time, while the other kids rest or read in a different room.
- Let each sibling have a 45 minute Quality Time Date with you during quiet rest time on a different day of the week. Alternate days until each child gets a date.
- Allow each child to stay up and hang out with you 30 minutes later than their usual bed time once a week.
- Draw pictures with your child.
- Color in a coloring book together.
- Play backyard sports together.
- Take just one sibling with you when you run errands.
- Have special date rotation where you take one kid out per month to do a special activity like go-carting, mini golf, pottery painting, or eating at a favorite restaurant.
Seasonal Fun
Hours of our screen free summer was spent swimming in pools, running through sprinklers, squirting with squirt guns, and playing with hoses. Water fun is an easy way to pass the time and let the kids cool off after hours of sweaty free play. Limiting screen time for kids is simple when you provide them with fun alternatives.
Whether you are doing a digital detox for kids in the summer, fall, winter, or spring, there is plenty of seasonal fun to be had.
In the summer try visiting a beach, joining a gym with a pool, renting a kayak for an afternoon, or purchasing your children some squirt guns.
In the fall, get the kids involved in backyard raking and let them jump in the piles of autumn leaves. Don’t forget to visit a pumpkin patch, go apple picking, and read your children “How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.”
During your winter digital detox, invest in good snow gear and allow your children to do the golden stuff of a screen free childhood such as having snowball fights, making snow angels, building snowmen, and sipping hot chocolate with extra marshmallows while they watch snow fall from a window.
In the spring, don’t be afraid to let your kids put on a poncho and some squeaky boots and splash around in puddles of rain.
Church Involvement
Sundays and Wednesdays were the easiest days of the week to limit screen time because we were plugged in with our local community church through the morning service, lunches, and an evening bible study.
What is your local church up to? During our detox, we spent a lot of time with our church family.
Excessive screen time is often used as a substitute for real life connection.
If you and your kids have been turning to devices for connection, I encourage you to seek out community in real life with your local, bible-believing church body. The people who attend will be there for you in a way that people online never could.
Screen free summers are just one way we have unplugged from the virtual world and plugged in to what truly matters. Let me know in the comments below why you are interested in limiting screen time for your kids and how long you plan to do a digital detox for with your family!
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