Hiya!

When our second child was eight (he’s 16 now) we made the decision to give him freedom over how much time he spent on screens. We’d been reading and hearing a lot about autonomy, about trusting children to make decisions, about giving them opportunities to develop their own sense of balance, and we were feeling like this was something we needed to do. Not just in some areas of life, but…in pretty much all of them.

Our instincts were saying otherwise, but the reasoning made sense to us. If we were always the ones deciding when he could use a device, how long he could spend on it, and when he had to stop, then we were the ones making all the decisions about when enough was enough. How would he ever develop that ability himself if he never really had the chance to practise it?

We’d convinced ourselves that almost total freedom was a necessary ingredient in unschooling. That if we as parents had the reins in any real way, we weren’t staying true to the philosophy. And, having tried a more traditional version of homeschooling prior to this and kinda failing at it, we really, really wanted this to work. And we believed that to make it work, we needed to stay true to all aspects of it.

So here we were, standing at the start of what I would look back on later as an ‘experiment’, handing the iPad keys over to our child. We knew there was probably going to be a fairly intense phase while he went all-in, but we also believed that was just…part of the process. With us alongside him he’d eventually figure things out, and find the balance that worked for him. And we’d be monitoring what he was consuming or playing or doing, so he’d always be safe.

So, he woke up that day, picked up his iPad, and…barely moved. Other than to walk over and pick up an Xbox controller for a while, before switching back to his iPad.

And then the next day, he did pretty much the same thing. And then the next day, same again.

It was hard to watch, but Kate and I stayed strong by repeating back to each other what we’d been told we needed to do - trust the process.

What we hoped was that he’d come up for air at some point. That he’d start feeling like, phew, this is actually feeling really intense, I need to do something else for a bit. And that, with our encouragement, he’d start bringing back the physical stuff he enjoyed so much. Getting out in the yard, riding his bike, coming down to the beach with us to swim and surf, getting out for hikes and exploring this beautiful world around us, tinkering with scooters and wheels and lawnmowers.

Two weeks in, that wasn’t really happening. The only time he did anything else was when he had to because we were leaving the home to do something as a family.

Trust the process.

We also hoped he’d vary his use of the device a bit. Gaming was a given, sure, but there was so much else available there. And we made sure he knew about it all. Interesting resources, things to look up, things to learn about. Cool videos, cool apps, inspiring people to tune into. We thought he’d find his way into those other things and the pie-chart of how he spent his digital time would evolve.

But what really happened was that he played video games, watched other people playing video games, and that was it. And they weren’t the kinds of games where you’re exploring a complicated world, getting involved in a story, making decisions about characters, or designing and building something. That would have been a very different experience.

It was much more the tappy tappy, flashy flashy kind of play. Casino-like. It was Geometry Dash or Subway Surfers or Temple Run, where you’re jumping and dodging and trying to get a little further than you did last time. There’s skill and dexterity and reactions and stuff involved, sure, but the experience he was having was very much…nearly got it, try again, nearly got it, try again, nearly got it, try again. There was a lot of frustration. Should we ban those games, and only let him play what we approve? Well, no, we can’t - that would defeat the whole autonomy idea we’d committed to.

Trust the process.

So another two weeks goes by, we’re now a month in, and this is all it really is still.

And when he came off the device, reluctantly, for things like food or a family outing or whatever, he’d be SO grumpy. Really foul-mooded, snapping at everyone, crying easily, frustrated over the smallest things, sullen, disconnected from his siblings. Everything felt like a battle. He was hardly moving during the day, he wasn’t ever physically tired any more, and he wasn’t sleeping very well. Whenever he had to come somewhere with us he’d whine and moan and complain and just want to go home, which was the total opposite of the outdoorsy, active child we’d had before. The kid who was always up for a change of scene and some adventure.

All the things he used to be interested in as an eight-year-old boy seemed to lose their value. Riding his bike, helping his mum bake and cook, listening to music, playing board games, drawing, lego, puzzles, messing around with his brother…he didn’t choose any of that any more.

Six weeks in. Instincts absolutely screaming at us that this is never going to change. Feeling literally like it is abuse to leave him doing this, but hearing over and over to…

Trust the process.

Surely, surely the novelty would wear off soon, the awareness of the rest of life around him would come back, balance would start happening.

But after a couple of months it was only going in one direction. Worse and worse and worse. He was less and less interested in engaging with life.

Enough was enough. It was time to stop trusting the process. This process, at least.

Which left us in a weird spot. We’d heard from so many different sources, and been told so many times, that autonomy is key to unschooling. That if we controlled things in any real way we weren’t giving it a chance to work. That children will find their way.

With the benefit of hindsight, personally lived experience, and a significant amount of deeper, wider, more extensive research, I now understand that is simply not true. We (and a lot of other families over the years, I’m quite sure) took this concept of ‘autonomy’ and applied it in a way that developmental science just does not support. Yes, autonomy is an incredibly important ingredient in child development. But supporting a child’s autonomy doesn’t mean giving them unrestricted freedom over every part of their life, or expecting them to develop the ability to manage something just because we stopped doing it for them. Healthy boundaries don’t interfere with development. In fact, they’re an important part of supporting it.

Our son needed autonomy. But he also needed help managing his pull towards devices, the choices he was making on those devices, and his use of those devices. Those two things don’t contradict each other. We just needed to work out how to support both.

So, after two of the longest couple of months of our life, we took him to the beach one afternoon and spent some time in the water. Where, of course, he complained that he just wanted to go home 😅 But we went for a wander along the beach and had a chat with him.

We helped him see how different life had been over the past couple of months. Described our experience of it, talked about all the things that didn’t seem important to him anymore, tried to get him talking about some of that himself. He was eight, so obviously we did lots of the talking and weren’t getting a huge amount back 😂. But the point was to explain that we were stepping in because we could see this wasn’t healthy for him, and to be really clear about why. We wanted him to understand what we were responding to, even if he wasn’t going to agree with what we were about to do.

Then we explained the plan. From now on, he’d have access to his device for an hour a day. He could choose when that hour happened, but that would be it until the next day. And there would be no more tappy tappy flashy flashy casino games.

It was almost one extreme to the other, because by then it felt quite critical to interrupt what was happening. You could argue we swung too hard, but that’s what we felt we needed to do.

Probably quite inevitably, he chose to use his hour first thing in the morning, which meant the rest of those first few days were quite a battle. He wanted it, wanted it, wanted it, and holding that boundary was…let’s call it an unpleasant experience.

But we held our nerve, and after a few days he started opening himself back up to the things he used to spend his time on. It was also around then that he discovered the piano, and he almost poured into that like it was a video game. It probably had some of the same challenge elements for him, with things to figure out and practise and get better at and repeat and repeat and repeat. But the key distinction was in what we saw when he walked away from the piano. First, well, he actually did walk away. Eventually, he switched to something else. Quite different to the screen experience. Second, even if he’d been frustrated for some of the time while trying to learn, he always seemed satisfied and much calmer at the end of it.

Music is still one of the things he enjoys most in life, even today. Piano is now one of his life passions.

But I need to be really clear here, because it would be easy to read this as a story about taking away a device, discovering an interest, and having everything work out from there.

No. That’s not how it went. Our son wasn’t suddenly some master of regulation and balance after that. We’ve had to work on this with him ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

Which is where the true version of ‘trust the process’ kicked in for us. The true process being a constant conversation about, and evaluation and revision of, our approaches and boundaries while we all grew together.

As soon as we get a bit loose with the time he can spend on devices, whatever the device is, it pulls him in and we see those same behaviours and habits start forming. There have been phases where we’ve been busy, or haven’t been as clear and firm, and he’s fallen back into it. So we’ve had to stay involved, keep talking about it, and keep maintaining boundaries allllll the way through.

It’s probably also quite important to explain that he’s naturally quite an obsessive person when he gets into something (like father, like son). If he’s going to build something technical and involved with Lego, he is building it. It’s hours and hours, he’s completely absorbed, he forgets to eat and drink and move. So getting deeply into something is very much part of who he is, and we love that about him.

But when he surfaces from that sort of thing, he’s generally positive. Pleased with what he’s accomplished, satisfied, feeling good. He doesn’t come away from it in the dysregulated, grumpy, super-down mood we so often see after he’s been immersed in the digital space.

Which means we can’t just explain all of this as him being someone who goes obsessively deep on his interests. He does, absolutely, but the effect on him is quantifiably different.

Since getting a phone at sixteen, we’ve had to work through some of this all over again. He’s very drawn to it, and we’ve had to be VERY clear with expectations. But it’s also over the past year or so, especially with the phone experience, that he’s started developing more awareness of this stuff himself.

He has a time-tracking app that gives him more detail than the phone’s built-in one. He measures his use, looks at where his time is going, and talks about sunk time when he’s got a bit lost in it for too long. The things we’ve been talking about with him over the years are increasingly things he notices, and talks about, himself.

He’s also told Kate and I a number of times that he’s extremely thankful for how involved we’ve been in helping him build habits around screens, rather than just letting him find his own way with them. I cannot tell you how rewarding that feels as a parent.

And I think that’s probably the most useful part of this whole story. At eight, we thought he needed us to step back so he could develop his own sense of regulation and balance. At sixteen, he’s beginning to develop much more of that awareness, but he’s needed years of help along the way. Including boundaries he absolutely would not have chosen for himself, and conversations we’ve had many, many, many times.

Also, just to keep this as balanced as possible, I have been told we should have given him longer. That more time would have eventually equalled more personal regulation. That eventually he would have found his own balance with it. But for the record, I absolutely do not believe that carrying on as we were would have been the right thing for him, and I’m very comfortable with the decision we made to change course.

That doesn’t mean another child will have the same experience, or that the hour per day we chose at eight is the right amount for someone else. What it means - which is the message I hope you’ll take from this little story - is that we had to let our experience of our child colour and inform and ultimately change the advice we were trying to follow.

This day and age of technology being absolutely everywhere is a challenging time to be a parent. But look on the bright side - at least it’s not as bad as what it’ll be for our children when they grow up and have kids!

Talk soon,
Issy.

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