Why parents avoid the easiest way to fix their kids’ crappy behavior

One time, an exasperated fellow parent was venting to me about how rude and defiant her kids were being.

She was a great, engaged mother, but she was running out of ideas.

I suggested that there was probably a fairly straightforward solution to her problem. I’d realized that there was one terrible influence in my kids’ life, one that consistently turned them into little monsters.

She took what I said to heart and tried it for a while.

The next time I saw her, she was flabbergasted at how well it worked.

I’d be willing to bet that, if you’re at your wits’ end with your kids’ behavior, you could apply this fix and start seeing massive changes right away.

The concept is not that difficult to grasp, but following through is.

An easy but difficult fix

What did I tell my fellow parent, based on my own experience with my kids?

You must ruthlessly cut your kids’ screen time — all the way to zero if need be.

The younger your kids are, the more ruthless you have to be.

This is extremely difficult to follow through on because:

Your kids will be mad and make you the bad guy
You’ll have to work a lot harder to keep them engaged with more productive and positive activities

I’ve written a lot about quitting alcohol and caffeine and the cheap dopamine hits they provide.

I’ve written about how they sap our energy and passion for real life as our brains get trained to focus on how and when we can get our next hit.

In my humble opinion, video games and cheap internet content create the child equivalent of having a substance abuse problem.

Kids quickly lose their attention span after too much screen time. (Credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

Zombified kids

Kids become zombies while they have it, and they get angry and agitated when they don’t. Oh, and their attention spans are completely shot, too.

In some ways, this isn’t their fault.

Game companies have designed their products to become as addictive as possible.

The flashing lights and sounds are akin to a slot machine, and the never-ending reward tiers and structures of modern games keep players striving for a goal that is always just out of reach.

I can’t even be mad at the game companies, to be honest. They’re making a product that a lot of people want.

Adults have every right to decide how they want to spend their finite hours on this planet, and if that means clicking buttons for hours on end, so be it.

At the end of the day, it’s our fault as parents for allowing those companies to hijack so much of our kids’ mental bandwidth.

I remember reading a story on one of the UK news sites about parents who felt they’d lost their daughter to the game Fortnite (the bane of my existence).

She didn’t think or care about anything else, they wept. She was obsessed.

She was messing up at school and could barely be convinced to even leave the game long enough to use the bathroom.

And the whole time I’m reading this article I’m like “who’s in charge here?”

Too much video game time turns kids into zombies. (Credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

You’ve lost control

If my kids ever acted the way those parents were describing, I would have curb stomped their Playstation in about five seconds.

They would never get to that point, however, because they know degenerate behaviour about video games means what little time they get will vanish in an instant.

Most parents are unwilling to draw a line in the sand because it makes life tougher for them.

Parenting is damn hard. I get it.

And it’s twice as hard when you’re exhausted or overwhelmed with work demands or whatever else is going on in your life.

But, just as alcohol and caffeine are easy but ultimately damaging short-term fixes for your poor mood, video games and YouTube give temporary relief but cause long-term problems.

Have you ever noticed, after your kids have too much screen time, how everything else suddenly becomes boring?

“I’m so bored. What do I do? This is boring. That’s boring.”

And everything probably is boring!

Once your brain has been flooded with artificial action and triggers, what’s the fun in reading a book?

The same way adults lose their attention span for more intellectually challenging tasks after too much time on social media, kids lose their attention span for just about everything after even just a bit of screen time.

Once, a teacher at our kids’ school asked if it was true that our younger son barely watched any TV. We said yes, and she remarked that she’d noticed the difference.

“All most of the kids care about are Star Wars and Minecraft.”

As you can imagine, our kids’ grades are exceptional. I don’t say that to brag — I’m telling you what is possible.

Replacing screen time

Screen time is the easiest crutch there is for a parent, and that’s why many of them tolerate their kids’ crappy behaviour.

Taking away screen time puts the onus on the parents to fill that time with something more positive and productive, and that can be mentally, physically, and financially draining.

But that’s part of parenting.

You’re preparing them to survive in the real world and you have to make sacrifices.

For us, our boys’ evenings are stacked with physical activity. Both kids play competitive sports, and that eats up about five nights a week each.

Organized sports are incredible for kids — it teaches them about goal-setting and working as a team and gives them role models outside of their home.

My older son also likes to come to the gym with us, and there’s always the outdoor hockey rink if there’s nothing else going on.

You don’t need expensive competitive sports, either.

During COVID, when everything was shut down, we went on long “night walks” every night and just chatted about whatever was going on in their lives.

Just because the pandemic is tapering off, doesn’t mean activities like that have to!

We shut screens down early in our house and don’t allow them in bedrooms, and sometimes that annoys our kids.

But the payoff comes when we say “go read a book” they actually do it.

Take back control

Making the decision to drastically reduce your kids’ screen time is challenging.

But trust me, the rewards are priceless.

At the end of the day, what’s more difficult: being the bad guy once in a while and having happy, successful kids most of the time, or having kids who are always defiant, rude, and miserable whenever they aren’t in front of a screen?

It’s your choice. Which one will you make today?

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