How did your family's limits on things like screen time & sugar end up working out?
Parent of Adults Mailbag #2 📬✨
Welcome to the second edition of the Mailbag, in which we bring our collective wisdom to bear on a fellow subscriber’s question.
Rebecca of Your House Machine has young kids and would like to hear from parents of young adults looking back. She wonders:
For parents who set limits around things like screen time and sugar, how did this play out long term? Are you glad you did it the way you did?
I would have loved to have a way to ask this question when my kids were little. This was the impetus for my blog, Parent Hacks, in 2005, though it was geared toward a community of peers rather than the diverse range of ages and experience we have here.
My experience of screen time limits is complicated by timing. When my kids were little, iPads/iPhones and streaming media weren’t a thing; it was TV, DVDs, computers, and video games (console, like the Wii). We had geography on our side — there were no devices in bedrooms, pockets, or backpacks. The only portable screen was a handheld Gameboy which we kept in our possession till “game time.”
Screen time limits were the #1 source of fights in our house for years. And let me tell you, they were fights.
While I don’t think I’d change how we set our time-based rules, I do regret my dismissive attitude. I wrote videogames off as mindless entertainment. In fact, they were an important source of joy, comfort, intellectual stimulation, musical inspiration and conversation fodder for my son. I didn’t understand at the time how my low-key disparagement disrespected that and backed him into a defensive corner. A less judgmental approach would have opened up more creative ways to set limits, and surely would have reduced the fighting.
To this day Sam loves videogames and is generous with the details about the rules and the industry. I’m a better listener now. I’m grateful he gave me many chances to do better.
As for sugar, we were relatively neutral, but my kids still needle me about my disdain for soda (or pop, depending on where you live). When they were growing up I refused to buy it and nixed beverages in restaurants, too. So expensive, and it’s mostly ice anyway! Ruins your appetite and your teeth! Even now, I can barely restrain an eyeroll when one of them orders a drink. I’m annoying, I know.
Still, I’m glad I was a hardass about soda. My kids aren’t in the habit of drinking it. When they do, they have to pay for it, which is its own built-in limit.
Enough from me! How about you? If you knew then what you know now…
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I was more of a hardass about food and drink when my kids were small. Like you, my kids were mostly small pre-internet, so screens were a different factor in those days. We didn't have cable on our road, so it was only ever DVDs, which felt easy to control in terms of content and duration. But all of that fell by the wayside after their dad and I split. He threw out all nutritional boundaries at his house and there was nothing I could do about it. I was all of a sudden a single mom who had to lean into packaged food and the electronic babysitter. I was still kind of a hardass about sugar for a while there, but by the time my oldest was in middle school I was just tired and felt like I couldn't hold back the deluge anymore.
However, the kids are alright. They have more of a taste for junk than I would like, but they eat well and dutifully when I cook. They play video games (another thing their dad introduced), which I don't understand at all but it hasn't turned them into couch potatoes. They watch a lot of screens, but it's mostly videos on TikTok about the Israel-Gaza War and makeup and recipes, so I feel like at least they're educating themselves?
I don't regret what limits I've been able to maintain, but they've also faded over the years and I can't muster any guilt about it. They're good, thoughtful, kind, charming people. That's all I wanted, in the end.
Growing up, no tv until I was 8, but then only after we did our homework. Limited tv. and 8:30 bedtime. When I parented, we had no tv for years, and then we rarely watched it. Sugar..I never liked sweets so not an issue. didn't keep sugar in the house.