Is your son doing physical activities? Does he like drawing, music, art? Are you playing with him enough?
next week i will experiment with a 50% reduction of screen time (currently @30min/day) and substitute it with a plethora of strategy games and legos.
hopefully this will do the trick.
ive twlked to a ton of friends with kids and they all deeply wrestle with this.
i honestly feel this will be our generation's greatest challenge. thanks guys for your support.
Don't forget there's a social aspect to it too. If you cut then of completely, when their v friends start talking about paw patrol or strawberry shortcake, they'll be left out. Same thing with the latest app or whatnot. Sure, they'll never know them all, but knowing none will make it harder for them to relate too.
This was probably tolerated in part because I was a pretty darn misbehaved child sometimes and watching TV wasn't as hard to deal with as explaining to me that no you can't tape a kitchen knife to your toy assault rifle as a bayonet.[0]
I like to think I turned out fine, so freaking out over 30 minutes a day seems a bit hysterical. That in mind here's my advice to get him away from the TV:
- Try taking him to the park. A lot of when I got out and really exerted myself as a kid was when I went to the park. It lets you interact with other kids, climb on stuff, go running around, and play pretend games that are good for the imagination.
- Get toys that encourage him to get up and play pretend. I was always a huge fan of toy guns, action figures, stuff with interesting mechanics (if you're on HN I'm sure you have the requisite taste to find such things). My rooms floor was always strewn with action figures and the like. A lot of the time I'd pit them against each other, sometimes in epic battle royales that may as well have been the Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny. [1] Important tip: Kids are generally not snobby, if it were me instead of buying expensive new toys I'd go down to value village and just pull twenty dollars of grab bags with interesting looking stuff off the wall, with the occasional new toy for flavor. When you're that age playtime is half imagination for everything anyway, and you won't get mad when he breaks them. Even when I'd play video games I'd make up my own story for what was happening with narration of the villain growing more despondent as I got closer to the stage end. Do be mindful of the choking risk though!
- Get him some real friends, especially neighbors kids. A lot of what would get me to go outside, was seeing someone else outside in the cul-de-sac and wanting to be with them. Even in those famous studies with rats and the cocaine water they found that when you introduced social opportunities and other recreation the cocaine water became much less compelling.
Overall though, your son is probably fine. As one comment in this thread suggested perhaps you could set a good example and pack up the TV yourself. After all are you really satisfied with the time you spend watching?
[0]: It needed a bayonet! Cmon I was like 9.