Screens, Emotions, and Limits: Bringing Mindfulness to Screen Time
Written by Saumya Patel and Jaclyn Long.
Screens have become a part of our everyday lives, and as your children grow up surrounded by them, it is inevitable that they will frequently ask for more and more screen time. As a parent, it is essential to recognize what emotions arise in you when your child demands for more screen time. Being mindful of your tendency to either accommodate their requests or explode with frustration can help you respond in a balanced and intentional way.
Setting the Foundation: Ground Rules Before They Ask
To navigate screen time smoothly, it’s crucial to set clear expectations well before children begin demanding more. These guidelines can help to function as "speed limits," ensuring structure and predictability for both parent and child. It always helps to plan ahead! As a parent, it will be helpful for you to stay ahead of the demands and be proactive with your values and guidelines, instead of following behind them and trying to play catch up.
Establishing Clear Expectations
Screen Time as a Privilege: Talk to your kids as though screen time is a privilege rather than a given. Make it clear that screens are a bonus that can be earned, and they can also be taken away if screen time is being misused.
Rules for Earning Screen Privileges: Create clear guidelines for screen use. Children build trust in us as we calmly and clearly outline these rules, which may include:
A set amount of screen time - which might differ on weekdays vs. weekends.
Completing responsibilities (homework, chores) before screen time.
Having screen time only in common areas, not bedrooms.
Collaborative Conversations: Sit down with your child to discuss the rules, hear their input, and collaborate on an agreement. When children feel involved in establishing healthy limits for themselves, they are more likely to respect the limits. Parents are often surprised how strict kids can be when establishing their own limits.
Consistent Consequences: If your child complains, begs, or throws a tantrum about screen time, remain calm and connected while holding the limit. If you have already established with your child - when you set your agreements together - that continued complaints will result in losing screen privileges for X amount of time, you can simply remind the child in a calm, clear way that this is the guideline. (NOTE: This is not a good time to throw out random consequences, because the child will find that inherently unfair). These expectations should be posted somewhere visible (on your fridge, in the living room, or next to where your child keeps their gadgets), decided WELL AHEAD of time, and should not be changed reactively in the heat of the moment.
The When-Then Approach: Lead with your values - “Work before play” is often a helpful family value. As the CEO (Chief Emotional Officer) of your family, you can set the expectation that screen time is earned after work is done. For example, "When your homework and chores are done, then you can use the screen."
The Emotional Cycle of Screen Time Requests
Without clear expectations, parents often cycle through different emotional stages when children repeatedly ask for screen time:
Green Zone: When your child asks over and over to use their screen, you might be able to remain patient and calm for a while.
Yellow Zone: As their requests persist, your frustration understandably builds, leading to impatience and irritation.
Red Zone: Finally, after more persistence, negotiating, and demands from your child, you will likely reach a tipping point where you either give in and accommodate their demands, or you explode and lose it at your child. The former leads to a child who comes to believe that if they tantrum long and hard enough, they will eventually wear you down and get their way. The latter often involves activating a part of you that discharges your anger and interpersonal disapproval onto your child, unconsciously and unintentionally shaming them. This shame often leads a child to one of two different options; they will either obey and submit out of overwhelming fear and anxiety, or they will rebel out of their own anger, rage and sense of injustice at your anger coming out onto them.
Being in the red zone and discharging your anger onto your child happens. It happens to all parents. It happens to really good, loving and wonderful parents who are doing the very best they can with what they’ve got.
However, even though it will happen, you do have a responsibility to turn inward and do the inner work of mindful parenting - reparenting yourselves and offering yourselves grace and compassion - while still holding yourselves accountable for our actions towards your children.
If you can bring compassion to yourself first, then you can more calmly acknowledge - with a sense of open curiosity - how unhelpful your anger and shame is for your parent-child relationship, as it decreases parent-child connectedness and makes it more likely that your child will not honor your rules and continue to push your limits in the future.
So, What Can You Do? Responding Mindfully: Staying in the Green Zone
To avoid getting so activated that you flip your lid and reach the red zone, see if you can intervene early on, when you are still in your green zone, feeling more in touch with your inherent sense of patience, centeredness and calm:
First Request, Give a Reminder : After your child’s first request for more screentime, gently remind them of the agreed-upon rules: Say in a calm, warm and light tone, "Just a reminder about our screen time rules."
If They Insist, Set a Limit: If they keep insisting, go close to them, go down to their level, and maintain warmth and connection while setting a loving limit. It can help to use a term of endearment and refer to whatever rules you have already established together (again, try to avoid adding any new rules into the mix): "Sweetie, remember our agreement. If you don’t turn it off now, you will lose screen time for tomorrow."
Likely Your Child Will Protest: Once your limit is set, expect resistance and anger from your child, but stay calm. By letting your child offload their tension, hurt, anger, and frustration onto you, you are creating an emotionally safe space for them to express their emotions. Say no to the behavior (excessive screen use) but yes to their feelings (anger, sadness, disappointment). This is something that you probably did not receive as a child yourself (most of us didn’t), so it might be nearly impossible to implement this without a lot of guidance and support from a professional therapist or parent educator. Please be gentle with yourself! You are re-parenting yourself as you commit to parenting your child in this new way. You have the opportunity to shift intergenerational patterns - but that is no small thing! It takes time, dedication and commitment to the inner work involved.
Limit Listen Limit: Set the limit, listen to their big feelings, then set the limit again. Acknowledge their emotions while staying firm on the limit. This teaches children that while their feelings are valid, and they can express their emotions to get all of their pain out, there are still rules that need to be followed. And you are there to help uphold clear boundaries and loving limits. Limits set calmly contribute to love.
Stay in the Green Zone: By staying in the “green zone” your child will recognize you as the calm confident “captain of the ship” in their lives, as Susan Stiffelman says, and someone they respect because you haven’t flipped your lid or offloaded your tension onto them. If you become agitated and erratic, you are no longer offering a regulated presence for your child in the midst of their dysregulation. It’s important for you to stay grounded, regulated, calm, and connected in the midst of their dysregulation so they can sense that you can be in very close proximity to this erratic emotion and erratic behavior and stay grounded. However, this is also very difficult, so please come back to being kind to yourself and re-parenting yourself, often with the support of a professional, if you continue to find yourself flipping your lid on your children.
Modeling Emotional Regulation
Children learn emotional regulation by observing their parents. By modeling emotional regulation, you are teaching your child how to be in contact with big, unpleasant emotions while staying modulated. If you can bring your calm to their overwhelm, they will eventually internalize this capacity to bring a deep sense of calm to their own big, unpleasant emotions. And who knows - they just might grow up and be a little more able to model emotional regulation to their own children one day, because you have been such a great role model for them!
If you find yourself moving into the yellow or red zone, take a self-timeout:
Notice your frustration: It’s important to recognize and notice when YOU start to feel frustrated. As you are noticing this, it is helpful to take a self-time out and excuse yourself from the situation for a small amount of time. By saying, "I’m feeling frustrated right now. I need two minutes to myself. I love you." in a calm and loving tone, you have stopped yourself from entering the red zone, and have shown your child how to safely avoid an explosion and regulate your emotions.
Set a Limit with Yourself: Instead of beating yourself up - which most parents resort to when they want to change their own behavior, see if you can shine compassion on yourself and set a warm limit with yourself instead. This is not as simple as it seems, so it could be helpful to contact a professional, such as an Internal Family Systems therapist, who can help you work with the different parts of you that get activated inside when your children demand more screen time.
Transform: Instead of trying to transform yourself with shaming and disapproving words, see if you can explore relating to yourself with connection, listening, and understanding. By transforming the way you discipline yourself, you are making it easier to transform the way you discipline your children.
Be Compassionate with Yourself and Seek support: Parenting is challenging. Remind yourself that you’re trying your best. Seek our a supportive friend, partner or professional who can be compassionate with you when you feel overwhelmed - and especially if/when you start putting yourself down as a parent.
Encouraging Autonomy: Empowering Kids to Make Good Choices
As your child grows, involve them in setting screen time rules. Ask, "How much time do you think is reasonable for screen use?” and “Why do you think screen limits are important?” and “How do you feel when I am on my screens too long?” This lets them know that as they make good choices around screens, they are building your trust. When they take part in creating rules, they feel more accountable and build self-regulation skills.
By setting clear expectations, responding mindfully, and modeling emotional regulation, parents can foster a healthy relationship with their children around screen time. This approach not only helps manage screen use effectively but also strengthens trust, connection, and emotional resilience.
Want more? Enjoy this video of Jaclyn Long, Director of Mindful Child & Family Therapy, as she shares some of the tips outlined above.