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I don't mean to judge, but this sounds like a great way to make sure your kids become experts at circumventing your limitations. Take it from a kid whose parents didn't let him play RuneScape because it had witchcraft in it, and whose playtime of neopets was limited to 1 hr per day. I quickly became unusually good at both sneaking around the house at night to use the computer at 2am and also was surprisingly good at navigating Windows. We didn't have laptops or WiFi back then so that wasn't a relevant aspect, though.

In your household, I suspect I would be chatting with friends in the dead of night. I also suspect that I would, one way or another, manage to come by the WiFi password that you presumably use for your own devices.

If you're trying to raise kids who regard you as an adversary to overcome, I suppose you're on the right track.

I don't know, my kids are 1 and 2 so maybe I'll change my mind when I get there, but as someone who has made a career out of looking at a screen and spent most of the fun parts of his youth doing so as well, I plan to teach my kids how to self-manage screen time. My parents limiting my screen time just made me try to do everything in my power to maximize it, and I do think that made me quite a bit of an addict when I was a teenager (playing wow 6 hours a day every day on top of school and sleep). I only really learned to manage my enjoyment of screen time with my enjoyment of non-screen-time when I got to my last year of high school and college.

My wife, on the other hand, was never really constrained beyond her parents sanity-checking things now and then to make sure she wasn't getting into trouble. And she has always had healthier screen time management habits than me.

"I don't mean to judge, but this sounds like a great way to make sure your kids become experts at circumventing your limitations."

There is nothing to circumvent and no adversary to overcome.

The Internet just disappears. They can play games or watch shows all they want to.

"... this sounds like a great way to make sure your kids become experts at circumventing your limitations."

If my children manage to erect a cellular tower within range or our ranch I will tip my hat to them.

"Well played", I will say.

> We have a different wifi network for the children that has a very restrictive schedule. Basically just Fri/Sat night and 15 mins on weekday evenings to send messages to friends and check school assignments.

> If they need to do homework, they plug into an Ethernet switch and sit at the dining room table with a laptop.

> There is nothing to circumvent and no adversary to overcome. The Internet just disappears.

You have to realize they very well know this is an arbitrary limit you have created out of thin air since they can see the other wifi network and (at least the oldest) just know that the ethernet switch works 24/7.

I mean, let's be real, they'll read about the Iranian and Egyptians warlords who tried to cut out the country's internet to keep control and make the connection.

> we don't owe them explanations as to why our family is different from other families

Don’t you feel like this will backfire at some point? I don’t think I would have liked it if my parents never explained themselves.

"Don’t you feel like this will backfire at some point? I don’t think I would have liked it if my parents never explained themselves."

This is turning into a discussion of parenting, generally, so I won't go too deeply into this ...

What I will say is that stability and predictability are what make this possible.

When our children were old enough to care about wifi and Internet and social media, these limitations were no surprise at all to them because they were directly inline with all of our parenting up to that point.

We have simple, predictable rules (and schedules and behaviors) and they have a good idea, in advance, as to how everything is going to turn out.

And to be clear ... we explain everything to them ... we have a very high level of communication and discussion and learning.

It's just never in the context of complaining, bargaining or negotiation.

You do give off vibes of an arbitrary authoritarian parenting style. I have to warn you that can backfire hard when your older and they are adults. I do hope you at least try to explain things to them.

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/authoritarian_parenting_style

Ho-boy you're cruising for a bruising when they get further into their teenage years. No way there's not gonna be rebellion in some form.

Would you be willing to explain to us why you do this?

This is an incredibly harsh restriction, and "we don't owe them explanations" would piss me right off. It sounds like you're really souring this relationship, and "I can have wifi, not you" seems really quite bizarre.

What do you think you're "protecting" them from? A healthy relationship with their parents based on trust and honesty? /s

> The other reason this works so well is that our children are not our friends. We don't have a peer relationship with them and we don't owe them explanations as to why our family is different from other families or blah blah blah.

You are aware that if you don't become friends with them as they grow up it's very likely you will very likely have a very limited relationship unless you continue to send them money?

I would agree that parents are not friends. It sounds harsh on the surface, but it just denotes that parenthood is a very separate category of relationship. You can't be a responsible parent if you treat your kids exactly like e.g. your adult friends or your neighbor's kids.

It obvious that they are a different relationship than your adult friends. Enforcing stupid rules without discussion or explanations is a pretty hostile action. Nobody wants you to treat a 3 year old as child, but a teenage would be pretty upset if some fuckwit turned of the internet when they are want to look some stuff on MDN or commit code to github. This also teaches your kids to be abused as adults. Excessive obedience is not a good quality. If you just want to boss them around when they grow up don't get upset if send you to a cheap-ass nursing home.

Although I definitely disagree with the "we owe no explanations" policy.

Ethernet only sounds like a good idea, even for adults ;)