How to Get Your Kids Off Their Screens
Let’s be honest — screens are the new teddy. Children are practically cradled in technology, whether it’s through a tablet or phone, a T, V or r gaming console. While technology has its benefits (hello, five minutes of peace), it can also be a distraction. Most parents crave more moments without screens — those filled with laughter and mud pies.
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How can you get them off the screens without them turning into rebels? The key is distraction – the kind of joyful imagination that captivates and captures your child’s attention before they realise they have left behind the digital world. Here are nine ways to get your children away from their electronic devices and into the real world. No tantrums needed.
1. Make a Little Magic in the Kitchen
Food is a great way to get your child off the screen.
You’ll have their attention the moment you say “cupcake,” pizza,” or “chocolate chip cookies.” It’s not just about the food. Cooking also involves connection, creativity, and sensory learning.
Even toddlers can help by washing vegetables, stirring batter, or sprinkling cheese. You can also add reading recipes, measuring ingredients, or setting the table to your list of tasks for older children and preschoolers. You can sneak in educational benefits by cooking. Early math (counting and fractions), science (melting and mixing), as well as literacy (following directions) are all developed through cooking.
By the time delicious aromas begin to fill the kitchen, screens are a distant memory.
Pro Tip: Make this a weekly tradition like “Pizza Fridays, or “Bake Off Sundays, and let your children plan the menu.
2. Launch a Backyard Treasure Hunt
Treasure hunts are a great way to get kids outdoors, moving, and thinking.
No need for gold doubloons or other fancy props. You can make a list of items. Think:
- Four feathers
- Black stones
- 5 different leaves
- Three flowers
- It’s red
- Smoothness is a good thing
- It’s bumpy
- Sound is a thing that can be heard
Give your child a clipboard with a pen and you’ll see their inner adventurer emerge. Bring the hunt inside if the weather is not cooperating. You can use household items. You can add a story element – perhaps the items will be clues for a mystery, or ingredients to make magic potions.
Challenge older children to design their scavenger hunt for parents or siblings.
Pro Tip: Include riddles and clues in each item to increase brain power!
3. Create a Cosy Reading Routine
The screens offer constant stimulation, and this is often what makes them so appealing. There’s something magical about reading a book and taking your time.
Build a reading area with blankets and cushions, add a few candles and hot chocolate, then let your child choose their favorite books. Let them pick stories that you will read to them, using all the silly sounds and dramatic voices you can manage.
Shared reading time can help build emotional intelligence, vocabulary, and imagination.
Pro Tip: Rotate your books every week so that there is always “new” material to read. Visit your local library to enjoy a new batch of stories and an outing without screens.
4. Host an Intergenerational Dance-Off
Music can instantly change the mood when the kids are going stir-crazy or fixated on a device.
Even the most intense screen-induced trance can be broken with a spontaneous dance party. Play some kid-friendly music (Kinderling Radio or Spotify Kids are good places to start) and invite your family to shake, spin, stomp,p, and shimmy. The more silly, the better.
Your kids will not only get some exercise and endorphins but also learn to associate screen-free times with happiness and connection, and not deprivation.
Pro Tip: Make it a game by adding dance contests, frozen dance rounds, or musical statues.
5. Build a Pillow Fort Empire
Want your children to stop using screens? You can inspire your kids to create a pillow fort in the living room.
Fort-building can be a great way to spark imagination, whether it’s just a sofa cushion castle or a fortress with tunnels and hidden places. You can enhance the experience by adding fairy lights, snacks, books, or even a pretend fire.
What’s the best part? The best part?
Pro Tip: Challenge your kids to create themed forts using items around the home (space station or jungle hut).
6. Take Your Pets on a Crafty Adventure
Animals are the best motivators to get away from screens. There are many ways to include your pet in fun and useful screen-free activities.
You can:
- Take your dog for a stroll and ask them about their day. Wash your pet (messy but fun!)
- Create homemade cat or dog toys.
- Invent new games for your pets (such as hide-and-seek, but with treats).
- Organise a photo shoot for your pet with props and costumes
- Create a cardboard obstacle course or maze
Consider “adopting”, for a couple of days, a garden snail or worm colony. You can observe their behavior together.
Pro Tip: Have your child create a comic strip or pet diary to chronicle their animal’s adventures.
7. Say Yes to Mess
Because they are clean, parents often lean against screens. No paint on the eyebrows. No dough in the hair. No glitter on the floorboards. When you embrace mess with the right attitude, it is not just tolerable but even joyful.
Set up an “unclean play area” outdoors (or on a wipeable surface) and let the child have fun with:
- Playdough made at home
- Mud kitchen “recipes”
- Shaving cream art
- Water balloon painting
- Clay sculpture
- Slime science experiments
- Paper mache creatures
- Natural paint made from flowers or berries
Messy play promotes creativity, sensory exploration, and fine motor skills. Kids often find it more fun than watching screens, particularly if parents join in.
Pro Tip: Prepare a hose and a warm tub to transform from muddy monster to a sparkling clean cherub.
8. Take a Mini City Adventure
A change of scenery can be all that you need to break your screen cycle. Plan a “mini city adventure” – something cheap and simple that offers plenty of exploration opportunities.
Think:
- Trains into the city
- Ferry across the harbor
- Visit a museum that has interactive exhibits
- Explore a sculpture trail
- Picnic in the Botanical Gardens
- Find the best hot chocolate around the city
- Playing the “tourist” within your city
Bring a camera with you to capture the best moments. Or, better yet, have your child take the photos and then create a photo diary later.
Tip: Print a map of the route you are taking and let your children navigate. Travel becomes a treasure hunt.
9. The Tiny Screen is Gone!
There’s nothing wrong with using your screen to comfort yourself if you’re having one of these days. You know, the kind where everyone is cranky, tired, or ill. You can make the time intentional and create a bond by changing from solo scrolling to shared screen experiences.
Choose a family movie, prepare popcorn, dim the lighting, and cuddle up under a blanket. Use this time to talk, laugh, and reconnect. You can ask questions about the plot. Talk about the plot. Allow your child to share their reactions and thoughts.
It’s not a radical change, but it does reframe screens as a way to connect rather than isolate.
Pro Tip: Let your child choose a theme for “movie nights” — such as “superhero Thursday” or “vintage cartoon Sunday”. Then, let them create snacks and decorations based on that theme.
Ideas for Screen-Free Success
Want to find more creative ways to reduce screen time? Here are some quick extras to try:
- Planting with your child: Have your child grow a small herb garden. They will be checking for sprouts daily.
- Nature Journals: Create a seasonal journal where you can draw and press flowers, as well as note any animal sightings.
- Puzzle Challenges: Create a family puzzle that you can leave on your dining table to be used occasionally.
- Sticker Books or Activity Pads: Simple, but absorbing.
- Card games or board games: kids vs. adults = instant hit.
Connectivity is the Key
It’s not about punishment or control. It’s reconnection.
Children’s need for passive entertainment diminishes when they feel valued, engaged, and involved in meaningful activities. What’s the appeal of these little tricks? These tricks are not only about filling time, but also creating memories. They do more than fill time slots.
Don’t panic the next time you see your child zoning out in front o Choose one of these suggestions, smile your most mysterious smile, and ask, “Wanna do something fun?”
You’ll both benefit from their willingness to say yes.
