How I Set Up My Kid's Tablet Learning
You've probably worried a lot about tablets for kids in the lower elementary grades, so I wanted to share the rules we settled on for our household.
On weekdays, 30 minutes of learning apps + 20 minutes of reading apps; on weekends, 1 hour including games. I have my child press the timer themselves. I found that building the habit of stopping on their own is much more effective than me cutting it off.
Instead, I install all the apps myself, and the app store is locked. At first there were a lot of complaints, but after about two months, they adjusted.
3 answers
Having the kid press the timer themselves is really the key. We switched to that too, and the arguing dropped a lot.
I locked down the app store too, but since I was managing all the account passwords myself, I later found out my kid was watching YouTube at a friend’s house lol. In the end, blocking just one device has its limits. So I switched to sitting down together on weekends and deciding in advance what we’d watch that week. Choosing content together was less stressful for both of us than controlling time. By the way, 30 minutes on learning apps seems about right for lower grades when you consider their attention span, and for reading apps, alternating with paper books is actually better for their eyes.
Well, isn't it a bit ambiguous to say you adjusted for two months? In our household, we stuck to it well until the third month, but it completely fell apart by the fourth. Since things vary so much depending on the kids' condition, fixing the rules in place actually made parents more on edge. I think it's best to just treat it as a rough reference.