Dear All,
As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing.
There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old.
Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many many more options for them to go online.
Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
Having been involved with a reasonable number of problems, I’d say in the teen years negotiating and enforcing some kind of no-device sleep schedule is the most critical.
If I had an answer to the rest of the addictive behavior, I wouldn’t be here making this post.
As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing.
There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old.
Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many many more options for them to go online.
Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
Having been involved with a reasonable number of problems, I’d say in the teen years negotiating and enforcing some kind of no-device sleep schedule is the most critical.
If I had an answer to the rest of the addictive behavior, I wouldn’t be here making this post.