My son wants to play video games basically all day and I'm trying to figure out what's reasonable. We've set a rule for an hour on school days but weekends are tougher. He's pretty good about it but I worry I'm letting him do it too much. What does everyone else do? Is an hour and a half on weekends crazy?
We landed on 1-2 hours on school days for our kids. My 7 year old can handle that without getting totally unhinged. Weekends we're a little more flexible but still try to keep it reasonable. The 'basically all day' thing will just create monsters, trust me.
Just wait until he's 13. Then it gets way worse. Screen time for a 7 year old shouldn't be that high but you need to set the boundary now or it becomes the nightmare I'm dealing with.
I think most experts say max 1-2 hours for that age but honestly it depends on the kid. Some kids can self-regulate better than others. We found that having specific gaming days vs free-for-all works better than a daily time limit.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting it, but at 7 I'd say 1-1.5 hours max on school days. What helped us is having gaming be a privilege he earns through homework and chores, not just a given.