Managing Habits and Behaviors; Cutting Down Screen Time

“We cut down Bodhi’s screen time,” is not a sentenced I thought I would ever say.

When you think “screen-time” you think hours in front of the TV with a kid who has no interest in playing or going outside, not progressing in school, not watching educational shows, etc. Bodhi didn’t have any of that.

So my thoughts revolving him and screen-time were skewed by this definition. I truly believed he never really had that much to cut down to begin with.

Bodhi is in school six hours a day, paired with errands, playing, activities, and an early bedtime routine, there wasn’t much left for a lot of screen time. Plus, the kid can’t still still, so if it was on, it was mostly just background noise.

And I think that is where the problem was.

It wasn’t necessarily that he was staring at the screen for an extended period of time, it was that he was in overstimulating environment.

I would play children’s music or Miss Rachel in the morning, because I thought that it was cheating screen-time. Both were educational and something he would talk back to\interact with. It all seems like such a better alternative than watching “Spider and Friends,” or “Minions” for the billionth time.

Our quest lately has been to create a calming environment for Bodhi, to get rid of some extreme behavior he was experiencing.

Next up was screen-time, again not because he’d vegged out, but because it creates a noisy environment where his brain is in overdrive concentrating on too many things at once.

It was one of those ah-ha moments I had for myself after a hectic morning.

We weren’t even an hour into the day and between the tasks I had to take care of, the baby crying, Bodhi not eating breakfast, the music on the TV, some shouting, and everything else, I was going to lose it. I couldn’t figure out how I started my day off so overstimulated. Usually it is the end of the day when you feel like giving up.

I turned the TV off to think of how I was going to handle the day. It brought Bodhi’s noise level down. I was able to tend to the baby without feeling overwhelmed. I quickly got through my morning tasks because I had my brain function back. Everyone was fed and well.

I sat back in a less noisy environment and calm down. That is when it hit me. It doesn’t matter the type of content on the TV for “screen-time,” it’s about the environment in which it creates extra unnecessary noise. It’s like when you are driving to a new location in the car, and you have to turn down the music to concentrate on where you are going. His brain could never get into concentration mode just like mine couldn’t that morning.

It was causing overload and panic in our brains, sending little ones into hyperactive mode.

So now, we do not have TV in the morning (unless it’s a rainy day, we wait at least an hour or two.)

We converse as a family, or play independently.

Saturday mornings we turn on music so we can dance around (no animations on the TV this time.)

Now the environment is calm so we can all think about our actions and behaviors.

So if you little one is experiencing some extreme behavior, or your house feels chaotic, check the noise level and what you are unconsciously adding to it.

Yes, vegging out in front of the TV can cause extreme behaviors that cause a chaotic house. That is the more obvious type of needed change and why the other kind of overstimulation “screen-time” was overlooked.