On the effect removing screens has had on my children, and how I am managing it
I’m trying to help my kids feel balanced, while experiencing thedownright fucking scary ride of life. This is how the screen ban is going, and a couple of dietary ideas too for managing ADHD.
I want to say thank you for the really sustaining and beautiful comments so many of you have made on the last two posts - about human connection, and melancholy. The process of writing these pieces - or speaking them, as in the case of the video piece - helped me, but then sending them out to you, and hearing you speaking back to me about YOUR feelings, has been a really, really important part of my life in the last couple of weeks. Your messages and comments have helped me a lot. So I wanted to say, I see you and hear you. I see you are real. I know you exist. And let’s keep on talking about these feelings and these things.
My Substack is a place where, among other things, I write about things that matter to me, that are troubling me or have made me think, that interest me. A while ago, back in the spring, I posted about taking screens away from my younger three kids. In that piece I wrote about the way screen use was effecting one of my children’s lives in a really negative way. Basiclly screens - or their removal - made him violently unhappy, so a year ago I decided to remove them all together. All the details of how and why I did this are in that earlier piece of writing, but since then lots of people have messaged me about it. So this week, I want to explore this extremely contentious area of parenting a bit more. I really hope this might be useful to you if you are considering, or trying, to reduce or remove screens from your kids lives. I’m also going to write about some very small things I’ve started doing with him everyday, to help him manage himself, and a change to his diet which, fingers crossed, seems to be helping mood. I’m pretty relaxed (lazy?) about what I feed the kids too (Coca Cola and ice-creams all round because it’s Friday kids?), but I’ve also dramatically reduced one very basic everyday food stuff from his life, which isn’t sugar and isn’t additives, but which is, I think, having a really positive effect on behaviour.
I’m putting all this behind a paywall because I can be more open in what I write about, and also because I make my living from writing. If you are a parent of an especially ENERGETIC, WILD, FIDGETY, PASSIONATE, UNREASONABLE, EXUBERANT, LOUD, SOMETIMES VIOLENT and possibly (undiagnosed) ADHD child, and want to read this to help you out, but cannot afford the sub, then DM me. I want what I share below to be useful and helpful to other parents. I also have bills to pay; hence, paywall. My paid sub is $7 a month, or $70 for a year, which works out at $5.83 a month, which is substantially less than a single cup of coffee in many of DCs cafes, or two cups of tea in Costa in England, but please do message me if this is a stretch or you are genuinely not in a position to pay this, as I want to help.