3-Months Without Screens

Scour these 13 red flags to see if your neurodivergent child should be screen-free, too 🚧⛔

Today’s the day; the one my kids have been whispering about. 

The one where we were supposed to consider bringing screens back into our family culture after three full months mostly without them.

And, my friends, let me tell you straight away that we most certainly will not be doing any such thing. (And the kids’ reaction was surprisingly chill.)

Here’s why…

Because when we began our screen-fast, the biggest challenge in our family life (the behavior, not the child, of course 😉) immediately began to plummet. 

And then, very nearly disappear. 

Over the years, therapy of all sorts, nutrition, medication, parenting interventions, and more helped us go from several hours of challenging behavior every day down to just over one. Stopping screen-time at home quickly got us most of the rest of the way there (without additional therapy hours or waitlists or any dreaded paperwork.)

As a result, we’ve been able to slash our therapy hours for both kids this summer.

My little one graduated from OT. I think I should have gotten us balloons and party horns and confetti. 🥳🎈

Can you imagine the one thing you’ve been working toward with all your heart to manage, and soothe, and heal — with every treatment and parenting strategy and crinkly fidget toy imaginable — for most of the last decade is suddenly an afterthought? 

It’s a bit strange to tell the truth. 

Almost eerie.

Right along with wonderful.

Yes, with a new school year AND a new school on the horizon, I’m anticipating a bit of a boomerang in symptoms in the coming weeks.

But at the moment, the tantrums, aggression, and stimming are a rarity. 

The only unfortunate thing is that when the difficult moments do arise, they catch me by surprise. I feel myself flailing, panicky, trying to get my head back above water because I'm so out of practice dealing with it.

My nervous system is having quite a time relearning what it’s like to feel calm and safe and not on guard every moment of the day and night. My own therapy and (probably long overdue) medication are helping me through the process.

A positive side effect of the screen-fast has been that the time I spend on my phone is down 38 percent, and I’m sure that will help my healing, right along with my children’s.

::

But what I want you to know — what I NEED you to know — is that doing a screen-fast doesn’t just help with tantrum behaviors related to autism, but also with your child’s other concerning behavior, academic, social skills, or mental health problems. 

The ones that engulf you with worry as your eyes pop open in the morning with lists of doctors to call, therapies to research, and potential solutions to fling into your Amazon cart — all racing through your mind, right up until you shuffle the last load of laundry down the hall at night and flop back onto your pillow.  

13 Signs Your Neurodivergent Child Needs a Screen-Fast

According to Dr. Dunckley, author of Reset Your Child’s Brain, if your child has three or more of the following risk factors, you need to be extra conservative with screen-time. And the more of these characteristics your child has, the more likely they are to become dysregulated with electronics use. 

1. Male gender

2. 12 years old or younger

3. Any psychiatric disorder (mood, attention, behavior, anxiety, or addiction)

4. Any neurological disorder (tics, seizures, migraines)

5. Any developmental disorder (autism, intellectual disability)

6. Chronic medical conditions (metabolic issues, diabetes, high blood pressure, pain, allergies, food sensitivities)

7. Any learning disorder

8. Any sensory-motor issues (sensory processing disorder, gross or fine motor issues)

9. Attention deficit

10. Performing academically below potential

11. Poor social skills

12. Family history of addiction or major psychiatric illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression, suicide)

13. Pregnancy or birth trauma (infections, any complications, difficult labor)

In fact, Dr. Dunckley writes, “If your child has any of the conditions listed below, I strongly recommend permanently eliminating interactive screen-time altogether,” due to the potentially life-altering negative consequence of electronic screen-time on these children — including our NeuroKids:

• Psychosis

• Autism spectrum disorders

• Intellectual disability

• Internet or technology addiction

• Reactive attachment disorder

• Alcohol or substance abuse

• Serious academic failure

• Antisocial behavior and conduct

• Social skills deficits

• Explosive aggression

• Severe ADHD

• Severe sensory dysfunction

• Depression with suicidality

• Serious medical condition

Between my two kids, they have every one of those 13 risk factors, so it’s not surprising that we saw such a dramatic improvement as soon as screens were removed. 

But we aren’t alone in our struggles. 

Ever-increasing rates of children and teens are facing their own particular cocktail of these disabling conditions that affect the whole family.

And if something as simple as avoiding screen-time can help so much, why is this the first that we’re hearing about it? 

Why isn’t a screen-fast the first-line intervention?

The one that every pediatrician, therapist, and psychologist prescribes as soon as they hear parents voice concerns about behavior, attention, learning, and mental health.  

Perhaps while they start the potentially months or years-long process of mobilizing for assessment and treatment. 

Before ever considering medication.¹

The easy answer is that there’s no definitive evidence to support a singular screen-time limit. That the effects of screen-time vary depending on the type of media, the way it’s used, and the characteristics of the individual interacting with it, so creating a Family Media Plan is more comprehensive and appropriate.² 

It all sounds pretty reasonable until you notice that top corporate contributors of the American Academy of Pediatrics (the body that effectively sets the standard of care for all children in the United States) include the likes of AT&T and Google.³

And now the deleterious health effects of too much screen-use by young people have the U.S. Surgeon General calling for a warning label on social media like that on cigarettes, saying, “the balance of risk versus harm does not justify the use of social media for adolescents.”⁴

Interestingly, in 2016 the AAP removed the 2-hour recommended screen-time limit for children 6 and over and reaffirmed its position in 2022.⁵ 

While it may be true that some children can handle more screen-time than others, in practice, the AAP’s newest guideline is obviously not effective in limiting anything, with children spending a shocking average of seven hours on screens each day for entertainment, according to their own site (and that doesn’t include time spent on education-related media).⁶ 

So, instead of a cautious, do-no-harm introduction to interactive screen-time for children, a full charge toward adoption is in motion, with a screened device glued to nearly every child’s hands, both at home and at school, without any long-term data to show that the benefits outweigh the serious risks.

We are the first generation of parents who are raising kids with smartphones in our hands. 

Our babies: the first ones to understand how to operate a touchscreen before they turned a year old.  

My husband and I got our first smart-ish phones in 2011 when I was pregnant with our oldest. We walked out of our 18-week ultrasound and sent pictures of the sonogram photos to the excited grandparents-to-be. 

From that moment, our children and the ubiquitous touchscreen grew up together. There is NO rule book for how to safely raise children with screens (except maybe Dr. Dunckley’s), which means we have to be super vigilant about what we allow into our homes and our children’s lives. 

We may have unwittingly enrolled our kids as the guinea pigs for the largest social experiment in history. 

But the good news is now, we also get to be the ones to write better standards for what we want the new normal to look like. To put our families back on the right course with intention. 

And even better? 

You can start right now.

You don’t have to wait for corporations to behave more ethically, or for institutions to change their recommendations, or for an act of Congress to add warning labels to your child’s login before you dislodge from the status quo and choose a healthier, happier life for your family.

And you don’t have to wait in line for a prescription or referral from a doctor. 

No one has to give you permission. 

And, what grief you may save yourself, Mama! 

More hours and dollars and anxiety than you might yet even be able to appreciate. 

⚠️ What if you could watch in awe as your child’s challenges decrease exponentially?

🚀 Making it about 1.3 million times easier to tease out the actual issues that need to be addressed

🚗 Scale back the dozens of hours you’re schlepping them across town to therapy every week

😎 And stop sheet wrestling your worries about your kiddo’s development and mental health and actually, you know — sleep, knowing your baby is going to be ok

If you could make this your reality in a matter of weeks, and start enjoying more confident, happy smiles from your child again, it’s certainly worth a try. 

Especially when all it takes is such a low-cost, low-risk intervention as taking a simple break from screens. 

Try it; see what happens. 

And if you’d feel better doing it in the context of a supportive community of other moms who understand, let me help. 

Hop on the bus, and let’s do this together! (No permission slip required.)

1. Don’t get me wrong. This family runs on medication, but who knows how many years of trial and error, life-altering side effects, and thousands of dollars we might’ve saved if we’d been told to simply try going screen-free first.

2. AAP Council on Communications and Media. Media Use in School-Aged Children and Adolescents. Pediatrics. 2016;138(5):e20162592

3. (2024, May 8). Current Partners. American Academy of Pediatrics. Retrieved September 6, 2024, from https://www.aap.org/en/philanthropy/corporate-and-organizational-partners/current-partners/

4. (2024, June 17). Surgeon General Calls for Warning Labels on Social Media Platforms. The New York Times. Retrieved September 6, 2024, from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/health/surgeon-general-social-media-warning-label.html

5. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2024, June 17). AAP Policy statement: Media use in schoolaged children and adolescents. National Academies. Retrieved September 6, 2024, from https://www.nationalacademies.org/documents/embed/link/LF2255DA3DD1C41C0A42D3BEF0989ACAECE3053A6A9B/file/D66DBFB7435E1172BDC6227D27C73698687A85340258

6. (2021, June 4). Media and Children. American Academy of Pediatrics. Retrieved September 6, 2024, from https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/media-and-children/