Summer is here, and with it, more free time, creativity, and sometimes, tension.
Warm greetings from Kingsway Counselling! As the days stretch out and kids are home from school, parents often find themselves juggling two common challenges: managing screen time and mediating sibling conflict. Here’s how to help your family work toward balance, connection, and calm, where no magic remote is required.
1. Understand the why: Too much screen time can stir more than just eye strain
When children have unstructured screen access, it can negatively impact sleep, attention, mood, and even sibling relationships. Excessive screens often reduce time for face-to-face communication, cooperative play, physical activity, all vital for socioemotional skill development.
Kids stuck in passive or overstimulating content may become irritable when it’s time to switch off, making sibling disagreements more likely. Establishing healthy limits isn’t just about quantity, it’s about preserving harmony too.
2. Set clear, age-appropriate screen limits, and stick to them
- For younger kids (2-5 years old), limit screen use should be no more than 2 hours per day.
- For school-age children (5-17), aim for no more than two hours of screen time a day, except for homework purposes.
Use visual timers, co‑view together, or establish tech tokens, earned through chores, movement breaks, or reading, that kids can redeem for screen time. Make expectations and routines clear, and give a gentle “5-minute warning” before ending screen time to ease transitions.
3. Reduce sibling competition over devices
When kids negotiate who gets the iPad or TV remote, conflict often follows. To minimize friction:
- Designate shared screen schedules with clearly split time blocks.
- Rotate access fairly: label time slots or have a simple token system.
- Avoid screen use during family meals, shared play, or wind-down routines
Encourage siblings to use screens cooperatively: watching something together, creating art inspired by a video, or having shared challenges. Shared screen experiences can become bonding opportunities, rather than battlegrounds.
4. Boost summer joy: creative screen-free alternatives
Turn this summer into an opportunity to expand horizons beyond devices:
- Outdoor adventures: nature walks, water play, scavenger hunts, biking.
- Creative at-home projects: arts, story-making, baking, backyard games.
- Family traditions: game nights, dance-offs, living room theatre, beach adventures, make unplugged time memorable. If you run out of ideas search on Google for some new creative ideas.
These activities help children build imagination, cooperation, curiosity, counterbalancing the often passive nature of screen use.
- Boredom: Don’t forget, kids being bored is a good thing; it sparks creativity and builds resilience.
5. Model healthy habits. Your own screen use matters
Children learn by observing. Excessive adult screen use, especially during family time, can reduce children’s motivation to unplug. Try these:
- Keep devices out of bedrooms and off during meals or shared time.
- Share in tech-free moments: read, walk, garden or draw together.
- Talk openly about your own strategy, such as putting your phone away at dinner, and explain why unplugging matters.
When children see you honoring your own boundaries, they’re more likely to respect theirs.
6. Navigate resistance and conflict with empathy
When toweling off from screen time leads to tears or arguments:
- Validate their feelings: “I see you’re upset because the game just ended.”
- Offer structured transition: “Let’s pick a fun activity next, a quick sketch, a backyard game, or a walk.”
- Avoid extending screen time under protest, consistency builds trust and predictability.
- Have sibling agreements in place: natural consequences known ahead of time can reduce surprise and escalation.
Help children to step away deliberately rather than dragging them off reactively.
🧩 Family Action Plan: From Conflict to Connection
| Step | Strategy |
| 1. Family meeting | Sit down together to co‑create summer rules: screen limits, shared schedule, and fallback plans. |
| 2. Tech Token system | Earn screen time through chores, creative play, active time, reading. Rotate tokens fairly between kids. |
| 3. Schedule unplugged experiences | Plan mini‑adventures or family traditions each week: walks, games, projects, campfire, library visits. |
| 4. Monitor and reflect | Use tracking apps or visual charts, and revisit every 1–2 weeks: what’s working, what’s not? Adjust as needed. |
| 5. Co‑use and co‑discuss | Watch together sometimes. Talk about what you’re seeing; use screen as springboard for connection. |
| 6. Model healthy habits | Be consistent in your own screen‑free behavior. Stay fully present during family moments. |
Final thoughts
Screen time and sibling tensions are common stressors of summer, but they can become catalysts for growth, connection, and creativity. At Kingsway Counselling, we support parents in cultivating balanced rhythms, not perfection. Through collaboration, empathy, and ritual, this summer can bring deeper trust, agency, and joy for your family.
Need tailored support? Our family therapists are ready with friendly guidance. You don’t have to navigate it alone. Reach out anytime.
Wishing you a calm, connected, screen-balanced rest of your summer!
