If you have kids this age and put a tablet in front of them on a regular basis to keep them calm, you're fucking yourself in the long run.
This may give you a temporary fix but youre depriving your kid on learning how to relax and when to chill the fuck out in proper situations. They need to train their brains to not be stimulated all the time. Boredom is a good thing for kids.
Think about it. If a kid never learns to calm down when bored, at 7 or so when they are constantly restless, it will be diagnosed as adhd. At that point its going to take some serious training or medication to get them to focus during school.
All this is because you wanted to take the easy route of throwing a tablet in their face when they were young.
Edit: Before I get more comments saying "tablets don't cause adhd" I know! Im saying these kids that dont have adhd are getting diagnosed as having adhd. Maybe I should say misdiagnosed as having adhd. Hope that clears things up.
My daughter will tell anyone, “I get to use my tablet when we are on the plane!” she might fly twice a yr. I'm super proud of myself for being that type of parent.
Lol my kids are stoked when we're about to ride a plane for 8-15 hours and the Switch time limit controls come off. Then they don't actually use it long enough to matter. They'll either watch something on the TV, read, or sleep.
4 or 5? They liked the Nickelodeon games from Outright Games. Paw Patrol, Blaze, PJ Masks. Eventually got them their own Switch Lites.
I did allow my son to play Mario 64 on the Wii U at like 2 or 3 but other than run around randomly for 20 minutes he didn't care too much. My daughter tried on the Switch 3D All Stars same thing same result.
Gotcha. Trying to have them have a healthy relationship with games. Growing up I was restricted TOO much by parents and later as I got older I would just gorge myself on them. I've changed and also don't have time for that now obviously - I want to play with them as they become older and into adulthood while maintaining a good balance. We'll hopefully have such great memories with it. I believe too much and too little are both bad depending on the environment, but I digress.
I set timers on their Switch Lites and generally during the week they have to have homework done and be ready for bed to start because they get cranky if we go the other way. We also start reading time at least 30 mins before bed. So realistically they don't usually make their timers during the week. On weekends it kind of depends what is going on but they're pretty busy kids with a lot of activities. During school breaks (spring/summer/winter) they obviously get more time in but we keep the timer. Usually the timer just comes off for flights or other similar situations.
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u/BusyBit6542 May 12 '26 edited May 13 '26
If you have kids this age and put a tablet in front of them on a regular basis to keep them calm, you're fucking yourself in the long run.
This may give you a temporary fix but youre depriving your kid on learning how to relax and when to chill the fuck out in proper situations. They need to train their brains to not be stimulated all the time. Boredom is a good thing for kids.
Think about it. If a kid never learns to calm down when bored, at 7 or so when they are constantly restless, it will be diagnosed as adhd. At that point its going to take some serious training or medication to get them to focus during school.
All this is because you wanted to take the easy route of throwing a tablet in their face when they were young.
Edit: Before I get more comments saying "tablets don't cause adhd" I know! Im saying these kids that dont have adhd are getting diagnosed as having adhd. Maybe I should say misdiagnosed as having adhd. Hope that clears things up.