Author’s practical guidance
A day with none, and what it actually costs you
Source named in the book: Positive Discipline (Nelsen)
A day without any is worth doing occasionally and it is not free.
Say this now
“No screens today. It's a bit of an experiment.”
Honest framing. Nobody is being punished.
“Tomorrow it's back to normal.”
Says the exception has an end, which makes it bearable.
Do this
- Pick an empty day with nothing that has to be finished by you.
- Say beforehand that it is one day and not a new rule you are testing on them.
- Get outside for a stretch of it, because that is where the hours actually go.
- Notice what they do with it.
- Decide afterwards what is worth keeping, and be willing to keep nothing.
Avoid this
- Announcing it as a new permanent policy. It will last four days and end badly.
- Doing it on a day you have things to get done. Pick a day with nothing in it.
- Treating a hard one as proof of a problem. It is proof that the day was long.
If it repeats
If it went badly, that is useful and not a verdict on anybody. Try it again in a month on a different sort of day. If it keeps going badly, your household needs the screen for the moment, and knowing that is worth more than pretending otherwise.
Why the book suggests this
A day without any is worth doing occasionally and it is not free. It costs you the twenty-five minutes to cook, the half hour you were going to work in and most of your patience by six o'clock. Books that recommend it rarely mention the price, which is a good reason to distrust them.
The point of trying one is information, not virtue. You find out what your child does with an unfilled afternoon and what it costs you to supply that, and then you decide what your family can actually sustain. A rule you can keep beats a better rule you cannot.
Related prepared situations
What happened next?
From this collection
Same Words: Every Screen
45 prepared situations in this family area.