10 ideas to reduce screen time and inspire unplugged play
“Alright, time to put down the screen for today.” It’s a sentence that strikes fear into the hearts of children around the world. As parents and caregivers, we’ve all seen our children’s eyes roll and heard their sighs when we put the kapush on screen time. We’ve seen their little hands thrown up in exasperation and have maybe even been on the receiving end of a temper tantrum. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can reduce your child’s dependency on screen time and encourage unplugged play by creating areas dedicated to unplugged play throughout your home. Reducing the amount of time your kids spend on screens can be a challenging process—for both parents and kids—but the effort is worth it in the long run. Increased screen time is associated with less family time, lower grades, difficulty in falling asleep, and social-emotional volatility.1 There is no single silver bullet. Effectively reducing your children’s screen time requires a holistic approach and a host of methods ranging from reorienting our perceptions around screen time to environmental changes. Environmental changes can include turning off “background TV,” limiting screen use at the dinner table, and today’s topic: promoting screenless play through the introduction of unplugged play stations throughout the home.
“Unstructured play can strengthen the brain’s ability to plan, make decisions, shift between tasks, as well as to control thoughts, feelings, and actions.”2
With a few small changes, you can make it easier for your child to find his or her next activity once it’s time to power off the screen. It will build their confidence to know there are other fun things to do besides watching shows, YouTube videos or playing video games. And you can feel secure knowing that once your child can independently find entertainment, they will be better prepared to navigate the world throughout childhood and adulthood. Research shows that unstructured play can strengthen the brain’s ability to plan, make decisions, shift between tasks, as well as to control thoughts, feelings, and actions.2 Free play is the mind’s way of preparing for all of the new and unexpected things that happen in life. Exercising that frontal cortex helps kids learn to adapt to life’s changes in a well-adjusted way as well as stay entertained during the day!
Make it easy for your child to “bump” into unstructured play.
Unstructured play is by definition self-directed by the child. It’s supposed to be fun and it’s supposed to be their idea. But what if you have to pry the tablet or phone out of your child’s protesting hands when screen time’s up? What if your child has no interest in battling boredom outside of glowing-screen-land? While no one can make kids engage in unstructured play (that would make it a structured activity!) there are steps you can take to encourage it. To ease the transition from screen time to engaged playtime, you can make it easy for your child to “bump” into activities by setting up stations throughout your house dedicated to unstructured play. It’s hard to be bored when engaging activities are begging to be colored, built, and repurposed everywhere you look. When you make unplugged play easy to encounter around the house, kids can strengthen their independent play muscles and maybe even forget why they were so hung up on screen time in the first place.
“It’s hard to be bored when engaging activities are begging to be colored, built, and repurposed everywhere you look.”
It doesn’t have to cost a fortune either. Similar to the “shopping your closet” mentality, rethink your house as a playground. All of a sudden, seemingly mundane items can become a wonderland for exploration.
10 ideas to reduce screen time and inspire unplugged play:
1) Turn your bathtub into a top-secret lab.
2) Give your kids their own dedicated supply drawer.
- Masking Tape
- Colored Felt
- Pipe Cleaners
- Paper Clips
- Large alligator clips
- Rulers
- Shape Tracers
- Child-friendly pencil sharpener
- Erasers
- Colored Pencils
- Crayons
- Paper (all sizes, colors, styles)
- Washable Glue Sticks
- Age-appropriate scissors
With these and other tools, kids can make cardboard forts, temporary racetracks on the floor, and all manner of creative contraptions and artistic endeavors. Their only limit is their imagination.
3) Roll out a big sheet of paper now and then.
Looking for a bigger canvas for your kid? Get inspired with chalkboard wall ideas!
4) Set up a writing and drawing station.
5) Re-think what you’re throwing away or recycling each week.
6) Help your kids reflect on the world around them.
7) Create a vertical play center.
8) Carve out a reading nook.
9) Keep a Slinky nearby.
10) Save those cardboard boxes!
Get more cardboard box fort ideas!
Fair warning: All of these unplugged play stations can have a “tornado effect,” where you end up with multiple little messes strewn around the house instead of one big one. These little messes are evidence of experiential learning, a testament to your child dutifully following their imagination. We’re not saying that they should have immunity to cleaning duty—your child still needs to be responsible for putting the toys away. But walking into the messy play space doesn’t have to be a mood-killer. With the right mindset, seeing a trail of toys can be a joyful, celebratory moment. Try asking your child to walk you through the journey they took that day. Celebrate their play—and then tell them to clean it up 🙂
“When we take the training wheels off of playtime by turning off the screens, our children can experience the independence and joy of pedaling their imaginations to new and exciting places.”
As Dr. Peter Grey, PhD states in his Psychology Today article, The Decline of Play and Rise in Children’s Mental Disorders, “Free play and exploration are, historically, the means by which children learn to solve their own problems, control their own lives, develop their own interests, and become competent in pursuit of their own interests.” When we take the training wheels off of playtime by turning off the screens, our children can experience the independence and joy of pedaling their imaginations to new and exciting places. And when those places are easy to find, they can spend more time discovering who they are, what they love to do, and just being a kid.
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