How To Entertain Your Kids Without Screens | Screen Free Parenting

Hey hey and welcome to today's video. We have talked in previous videos about how we became screen free, why it's important to limit screen time and how you can actually start doing that. One of the main questions you probably still have is what am I going to do with my kids because my kids are so used to either tv time or they just don't know what to do. So what are we going to do with our kids? Well that is what we're going to talk about today. Okay so the other day me and my family went out for dinner and it was me my husband and our three younger children who were seven four and two and we just had a great time. It was just so fun to talk and to laugh together and it was it was really fun. Anyway halfway through our dinner another family came in and it was mom dad and two children who were I think nine and one ish and their grandparents. So they were with six in total and they sat down. Dad grabbed his phone immediately and mom grabbed two ipads out of her bag put them in front of the children and the children had been watching tv from start to finish. Like literally all they did was watching youtube videos, youtube shorts, tiktoks. The girl kept switching. I couldn't see the little boy but I saw the girl and she was literally just watching videos random stuff while she was having pizza and she did not say your word to her parents or her grandparents that were at the same table. And it just it made me really sad to just witness something like that. An entire family going out for dinner and there is no conversation. Everybody is just doing their own thing. The grandparents were talking together or watching just outside of the window. Dad was on his phone the children are watching videos and it was just one big unsocial activity and it just made me so sad because it made me realize as well that a lot of parents really don't know what to do with their children to keep them entertained without using screens. A screen has become a babysitter in many cases and it's just it makes me really sad to think about that. That you can go out with your children and not say a word to your children and that is also why I thought this video would be helpful to a lot of people because not that I have all the answers. I really don't but I just realized how many people are very dependent on their screens and don't really know what to do with their children. So that is what we're going to talk about today. Just how can you entertain your children or how can you make sure they entertain themselves without using a screen. So the first thing I always recommend doing is going outside. No matter what happens if your children are cranky or whatever it always helps at least in our family to just grab our bikes and go. Go to the park. Go somewhere. Go to a playground. Let them just run around and be kids because that is one of the most important things they can do. Go outside. Move their bodies. Be active. Climb. All the things. Whatever it is that they love to do it is really good for their body. For their physical activity and it's just it's really good for them to be outside. Fresh air and all and it's also really fun for you as a parent. Now in the beginning where your children are really used to using screens it can be important to actually do things with them. For us our children are so used to being screen free that they just say hey mom I'm going outside. They grab their bike and out they go and I will see them from the window in the playground in front of our house and I can just see them and they are just having lots of fun. They play all sorts of all sorts of things but it's just in the beginning it can be hard to have them go outside and let it figure out for themselves. So in the beginning it might be smart to just go to the park with them and to kick a ball with them but try to get them outside because that is always one of the easiest ways to get your children to do fun things and to make them forget about time. So go outside is definitely my biggest and most important tip but also when it's raining you can't really go outside unless you're one of those people that likes to be outside in the rain which we're not. But if you want to do things inside there are a lot of things that you can do. You can do crafts with your children which is also something that you would maybe want to guide at the beginning. You can do fun things with the children that are themed for the season or for a specific holidays or Easter for Christmas things like that. You can do a lot of fun things and Pinterest is full of fun things to do with your children. So if you're looking for crafts go to Pinterest and you will find a bajillion fun things to make. So that is definitely something that needs a little bit of guidance at the beginning but also my children really just they say hey mom I'm gonna go color they grab a book they sit at the table and they can spend hours well not hours actually coloring is a little tougher but they can spend about an hour at the table just coloring putting stickers on stamping painting whatever it is they love doing crafts. Now another thing that might involve you is reading books. If your children are not at the age of reading themselves then you will have to read for them but it's really fun and something that your children will actually grow to love. We started doing read-alouds from a pretty early age but I didn't do it consistently every single day for a while and when I said okay kids we're gonna read a book they were not super excited they liked it but they were not super excited but now I've done read-alouds for the last I think three months or something three four months and I do it every single morning and now they literally come up to me when my phone rings when it's nine o'clock my phone has an alarm clock for nine o'clock and my phone rings they grab the book and they say mom can you please read because we love this story we are now reading Charlotte's Web it is such a fun book I will link it below as well it is definitely a must read for every child it is so fun and they really love reading the book or love me reading the book so that is definitely something that can make your children enjoy time with you and what I love about reading a book is I can read to them and they can sit with me they can cuddle with me if they want to but they can also play a lot of times my son will get his lego sets out and he will just build a car or whatever it is and he will just listen while he does something for himself my daughter loves to color while I read um they do like I said legos and duplo and all those things they can really do things for themselves while I am reading so you can actually do two things at the same time which is also fun but that is something that keeps them entertained for quite a bit and actually yesterday I think I've been reading for I don't know over an hour because they kept asking me for more when I said okay I'm kind of done right now they said no please do another chapter so children will actually love when you read to them so that is definitely something that I would like to encourage you to do because it's not only fun for the children it's also really good for them because yesterday in the chapter there was actually something um about I don't even know what word but there was a sentence where they used a word and then the next sentence used a different type of word to explain the same thing and it was three or four consecutive sentences that had a different word for the same thing and it's really good for their vocabulary so I said look this word all means basically the same thing in Dutch because we're a Dutch family but it basically means the same thing in Dutch but when you read it in English you actually have different words to explain the thing that is happening and it was really fun to help them see different words to describe something and it's just really good for their vocabulary for their word knowledge for overall knowledge and it was it was just really fun to see how they get that information into their heads and they can use those words now having that exposure to different words and different vocabulary is really good for their brain so it's not only fun it's also really good for your children to do that now another thing that my children really love to do is just play on their own they love like I said they love lego so my son usually goes upstairs and just says hey mom I'm gonna build some legos which is totally fine they can go upstairs and build their legos if they want my daughter has playmobil and which she loves she loves doing the role play type of games and doing puzzles those are things that they actually will do themselves in their rooms or they sit here they grab a book they just watch all the pictures and we that is actually part of reading books we also love going to the library and just grabbing new books and just watch all the pictures because my children are not reading yet my oldest is reading but obviously he's seven so he doesn't read all the big books he just reads the simple books um but they are not reading all the books yet but they can look at all the pictures and they love watching the pictures so sometimes i'll say hey let's go read a book i will turn on some quiet music some calm music they sit at the couch and they just look at the pictures they will grab the bible and just look at all the pictures and tell me the story about one thing that they see for example david and goliath when they see the picture in the bible they will say hey mom this is about david and goliath do you remember what happened and they will tell me the story about the bible verse or things like that and that is really fun to get them to use their brains more instead of just constantly being consumed by getting information into their heads getting so much information overload by using a screen instead of having all that information they are actually now learning and they are explaining themselves and they are learning how to talk and learning new words and all those things so that is really fun and it's really important for your children now another thing that i think is really important is that you don't always need to entertain your children a lot of times it's actually really good for them to just be bored because we often feel the need to give them something to do okay you're bored maybe you can do this maybe you can do that here you can find xyz you can watch this no let them be bored let them figure it out for themselves i sometimes say okay well you're bored well figure it out find something that you want to do and they will come up with the best things when they're bored honestly my son always goes upstairs for quiet time my youngest two uh still nap both of them and my oldest just goes upstairs for quiet time and he says i don't know what to do well figure something out find something in your room that you can do and then he will come down and he has the most amazing lego thing that he built or he made a fun drawing or whatever he just figured something out himself and it's really fun to watch and i don't always have to say you can do this or you can do that let them think about things themselves and let them come up with very creative ideas because children are so creative they can use anything to entertain themselves i mean look at children in third world countries who can play hours with just a stick and a stone you don't need all those fancy crazy toys and all the screens to be entertained children can perfectly entertain themselves and i think it's important for us as parents to let them do that again let them be bored don't always hand them something to do just let them figure it out for themselves i really think that's important and another thing that is kind of funny to me a lot of times people will say yeah well if they're not watching tv how are we gonna get them quiet or how are we gonna let them sit still well maybe you can ask your parents or your grandparents because they didn't have screens when they were younger so what did they do to sit still or to learn how to i don't know to entertain themselves what did what did your parents do when they were younger because we think that it's super normal to have a screen all the time but literally just like 40 years ago there was no screen available for everybody so you have to figure things out yourself so if you really don't know what to do go ask your parents and they will know all the things that they did in order to keep entertained and that is also funny because we are now so used to using screens and have it as a babysitter that a lot of times parents will say to me like oh your children are not using screens well that is actually important what are your children doing or um people will say well how do you keep them quiet how do you clean the house when your children are around well i do the same things that people did 50 years ago but it's just it is so uncommon right now that people think we're weird but we're not we're actually doing what people did 50 years ago and it's really good for our children well anyway i hope this is something that gave you some inspiration on how to entertain your children and please remember do not always feel the need to entertain them let them entertain themselves because that is actually important now if you want to learn more about why and how we became screen free and all the things that involve being screen free i have a playlist with all the videos i did about screen free parenting which i will put in the i-card above and i'll also link all the videos below because i really do believe in becoming screen free and i think it's very important that we as a generation start to eliminate more screen time because our children are addicted to screens from the earliest age um and that really it just makes me sad so anyway if you love content that is about homemaking home management screen free parenting all the things about home then feel free to subscribe because that is all the content i make and i love doing that i love talking about being screen free and being a housewife being a modern day housewife so anyway if you love that feel free to subscribe and i will see you in my next video