School holidays coming up! Guilt-free screentime techniques

With school holidays in full swing across much of the country, it can be hard to manage the screen time of kids. I spoke to Sunrise today that our focus should not be on feeling guilty that we are handing over the iPad to them, rather our focus should be on selecting value-add activities using their tech plus teaching them to learn good tech habits.

An easy tip, use a timer.

Screentime is often an issue and we get frustrated that kids don’t necessarily follow our rules. If you tell your 8 year old that they have one hour on their iPad it's really hard brain-wise for them to understand and stick to that. Time is a hard concept for children to learn. Even we as adults need a watch to be able to stick to the hour.

So, give your child something that they can look at to keep track. Something they can see like a timer on their screen or a big, old fashioned sand timer. This will help them see the time passing and they will know when the hour is close to being up and when its up. There are lots of other great, simple tips in the interview about the best apps to choose and age-appropriate content.