An Ordinary Mom's Musings

Sung to the tune of Do You Hear The People Sing? from Les Miserables

Screen time is over. . .

The great debate between, “Are my kids getting too much screen time?” The debate becomes even more high stakes when you add ADHD or Autism into the picture. We have both at our house. When my children were little I was hugely conscious of what they were watching and how much they were consuming. My rule was an hour max daily. I made occasional exceptions for family movies of course. The content was usually educational or a Disney movie. (Ask me sometime why I would do things differently with my Daughter and Disney movies.)

Once I found out we were dealing with Autism and ADHD, I became doubly concerned. I knew that kids with Autism and ADHD tend to gravitate towards screens more than their peers.

In preparation for this post, I did some research on this subject. I found this study from the NIH that found that children with Autism do not use screen time more than their peers without Autism. It was found that they utilize the same amount of time as their peers. Often both sets of the test groups used screen time two times the amount of what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. Are we screen-obsessed as a society? Probably.

What the study was not looking at were the meltdowns that ensue with children with Autism and ADHD over having to give up the screen. . . The meltdowns in our house can be epic. I’ve seen the same thing friends houses who have children with Autism or ADHD.

Does it cause ADHD?

One of the things that we do know is that watching TV at a young age, depending on the type of programming, can change any child’s brain. This has lead some researchers to believe that TV may actually cause ADHD. This brain rewiring is thought within the larger medical community to be the same whether the child has Autism or ADHD.

As I was super cautious about my kids and their TV watching, I am fairly confident that TV viewing (which was the only screen they were exposed to for years) didn’t cause their ADHD.

And then I found this gem in Psychology Today claiming that Autism was caused by children’s exposure to screens and that withdrawing their access to screens would “heal” them. Since we tried screen time fasting multiple times, I’m here to tell you that all we got out of it, were horrible meltdowns and aggressive behavior. There was no “healing” going on and my child’s Autism wasn’t caused by screens.

What I’ve learned from my research? Too much time in front of a screen is bad for anyone. I don’t have to worry about my child consuming more screen time than others based on his Autism or ADHD. So give yourself a break on the worrying, and take a moment to breathe. Set limits. Your kids can thank you for it later. And then try and work on the meltdowns that come when your child has to give it up.