Tablet Rules for Preschoolers: Setting House Rules at Home

The Japan Pediatric Association’s committee on children and media has produced posters and leaflets for parents with the message “Don’t let a smartphone do your babysitting”. On the committee’s page it asks families to aim for a total of no more than two hours a day of screen contact, including TV, games and smartphones. The World Health Organization’s 2019 guidelines say that for children aged two to four, sedentary screen time should be no more than one hour a day, and less is better.

Even so, many families rely on a tablet now and then: on a long car ride, in a waiting room, or when a parent’s hands are full. One view is that what matters more than whether to hand over a tablet is whether the household has rules for when it does. This post is about making those house rules for children aged three to six.

I covered the official guidance on age in more detail in What Age Should Kids Get an iPad?, and the iPad settings in How to Set Up Screen Time on an iPad for Your Child. Here I focus on family rules rather than settings.

Five things to decide

1. Where it is used

Decide on the place first. While children are this young, it helps to keep the tablet to places like the living room, where adults can see and hear. You know what they are watching and what it sounds like without having to check. The Japan Pediatric Association has also long advised against putting TVs, game consoles or computers in children’s bedrooms.

If the tablet does not go into the bedroom or under the covers, overuse before sleep is much easier to avoid.

2. When it is used, and when it isn’t

Rules about when the tablet is not used are easier to keep than rules about how long.

• Not at mealtimes
• Not in the hour before bed
• Not while getting ready for nursery in the morning

“No more than so many minutes” is hard for a young child to feel. “Not at dinner” is something a three-year-old can understand.

3. What it is used for

Start with only a few apps that are allowed. Adding more later is easy. Taking something away once it has been allowed is hard. Watching videos, playing games, using learning apps, looking at photos: the same tablet can mean very different things. It helps to centre on things where the child moves their hands or thinks, rather than things they just watch.

4. How it ends

For young children, the hardest part is stopping. If a tablet is taken away suddenly in the middle of something absorbing, it is no surprise that a child gets angry.

• Agree before starting that “when the timer rings, we stop”
• A little before the end, say “one more and we’re done”
• Decide what comes next (a snack, a walk, a bath)

Leaving the announcement of the end to a timer or an app’s time limit is a good approach. When a parent says it, it becomes “Mum made me stop”. When the timer says it, it becomes “time’s up”.

5. How adults use screens

Children watch how adults use their phones. If we tell a child “no screens at dinner”, the adults should leave their phones off the table too. House rules are better kept when they are family rules, not just rules for children.

Deciding together with the child

The American Academy of Pediatrics offers the Family Media Plan, a tool for families to talk about and decide how they use media, setting screen-free places and times for each member of the family.

It is hard for a three- to six-year-old to come up with rules from scratch. But they can take part: writing the rules on paper together, drawing a picture of them for the fridge, choosing the timer sound together. A rule the child helped to make is no longer “something I was told”. It becomes “something we decided”.

Rules are not fixed once made. It helps to agree to review them at milestones, such as a birthday or starting school.

When the rules are broken

Rules usually get broken at least once. When that happens, it matters more to talk about what to do next time than to take the tablet away. If a rule is broken several days running, perhaps the rule does not fit the child. The time may be too short, the signal to stop may be unclear, or there may be nothing to do afterwards. Fixing a rule matters as much as keeping it.

Time limits and the adult gate in BrainDojo Kids

BrainDojo Kids is an iPhone and iPad app for ages three to six. It is built to help with the “how it ends” part of this post.

To set a limit, tap the Parents button at the bottom right of the player selection screen, pass the adult gate, and go to Daily time limit under Learning time in the settings. It is on by default at 10 minutes and can be set from 5 to 60 minutes in 5-minute steps. While the app is in use, the remaining time is shown at the top of the screen, so the child can see the end coming too. When the limit is reached, the screen changes to say that today’s training is done and shows how long the child played. Time is counted for each player and resets when the date changes.

The adult gate asks you to press and hold inside a circle with two fingers for three seconds. The parent settings and the purchase screens are behind it. If a child taps a paid game, the app tells them it can be played with Premium and asks them to fetch a grown-up, without going on to a purchase screen.

There are no ads and no account to create. The three Today’s Training games and four Recommended games, which change daily, and Sugoroku Together, a board game for two to four players, are free. A Premium subscription (monthly or yearly) opens all courses and games.

Getting Started with BrainDojo Kids covers the first session, and Practical Tips for Using BrainDojo Kids Every Day has ideas for keeping it going.