Parent resources
Most screen-time advice starts from the assumption that the answer is a smaller number. In a house with a tablet, a console, a school laptop and a phone somewhere in the mix, cutting the number is rarely the fight that gets won.
These guides take a different angle. They cover how to set limits that survive a bad Tuesday, how to give the day a shape your child can predict, and how to make the time they already spend on apps do a little work for them.
Where screens sit in the day — after homework, before dinner, never in the morning — matters more than the exact count of minutes. A predictable slot removes most of the negotiating, because there is nothing left to negotiate about.
“Twenty minutes” means very little to a seven-year-old. “Until the timer goes off” or “until I call you for dinner” is something they can actually track, and it moves the authority from you to the clock.
A two-minute heads-up prevents most of the meltdowns that get blamed on screens. Being pulled out of something mid-way is the part children object to, not the limit itself.
A video call with a grandparent, a reading app and an endless video feed are not equivalent, and a single daily total treats them as if they were. Decide which kinds you want more of before you decide how much to cut.
Screen Time5 min read
A practical guide to healthy screen-time habits for children aged 5–12: setting limits that hold, giving the day a predictable shape, and handling the moment the screen goes off.
Published 31 August 2026
Screen Time5 min read
Practical ways to make the screen time your child already has do something useful — without downloading another educational app they will forget about in a week.
Published 31 August 2026