Most weeks I’ll have a parent at our club say some version of the same sentence. They’ll mention it casually, half-laughing, usually while we’re standing by the dojo door waiting for class to start.
“My child just loses it when the iPad goes off.”
Sometimes it’s the iPad, sometimes it’s the Nintendo, sometimes it’s the TV. But the story is always the same: when the screen goes off, the child melts down. And the parent is at their wit’s end.
I’m not a child psychologist, but I’ve been a parent for nearly twenty years, and I’ve spent a lot of time around children. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about what makes people tick, and what makes them learn. And I’ve come to believe that the problem isn’t the iPad. It’s a play problem.
Here’s what I mean.
One. Play with them.
I know, I know. You’re busy. You’ve got a million things to do. But if you want your child to be able to switch off the screen without a meltdown, you need to give them something else to be absorbed in. And the best way to do that is to play with them.
Not just supervise them playing. Play with them. Get down on the floor. Build the Lego castle. Play dolls, dinosaurs, whatever — and you have a choice between joining in and “just quickly checking this email,” join in. Not every time. Nobody can do it every time. But more often than you currently do. When a parent really gets into the play, the child learns that the real world is the kind of place worth being absorbed in. That signal — this matters because mum thinks it matters— is one the tablet can’t send. And it’s the signal that, over months and years, builds the skill we’re talking about.
Two. Resist the urge to “rescue” a bored child.
This one is hard. When your three-year-old says they’re bored, every instinct says to fix it. Don’t, not always. Boredom is the doorway to imagination. The child who has to invent their own next ten minutes is the child who’s building exactly the muscle we want them to build. Sometimes the best parenting move is to say “I’m not in charge of fun, you’ll think of something” and walk into the kitchen.
Three. Have one toy out at a time.
A floor covered in fifteen toys is overwhelming, and overwhelmed children flick between things like adults flick between TV channels. One basket, one set of toys, swap it out every few days. Children play with one thing for much longer when it isn’t competing with everything else they own.
Four. Don’t end screen time without warning, but don’t bargain either.
The research is clear that abrupt cut-offs make tantrums worse, but so does negotiating (“five more minutes… ten more… okay, just till the end of the episode”). What works is a calm, predictable signal — same words every time — and then following through without drama. “When this episode ends, we put the iPad in the drawer.” Then it ends, then it goes in the drawer, then you change the subject. The drama you don’t bring is drama the child won’t bring either.
Five. Replace, don’t subtract.
This is the big one. “Less screen time” is a subtraction, and subtractions are very hard to live with. “More of this other thing” is an addition, and additions are easy. Don’t try to take away the iPad. Try to add something so absorbing that the iPad has to compete with it. A weekly judo lesson. A trip to the woods every Saturday. A mucky-paint session on the kitchen table. A class somewhere where they get on the floor with other children and use their body.
(This last one is, full disclosure, what I do for a living. I run a judo club for three- and four-year-olds in Woking. I’m not going to pretend that’s not relevant to me writing this. But the principle applies whether the something is judo or swimming or forest school or anything else — and if you find your version of it somewhere that isn’t us, I am genuinely glad. The point is the something, not the where.)
A child psychologist called Vygotsky, working nearly a hundred years ago, wrote that play is “the leading activity” of small children. He meant something specific by that. He meant that real, physical, imaginative play isn’t a break from learning — it is the learning. It’s where small children practise wanting something they can’t have yet. It’s where they practise being part of a story bigger than themselves. It’s where they learn to manage the gap between what I want now and what I’ll get if I wait.
The iPad is the opposite of that. The iPad delivers what you want, instantly, every time, with no waiting and no friction. That’s not an accident. That’s the entire business model. But a child raised on instant delivery doesn’t have anywhere to put the wanting when the delivery stops. And that’s the meltdown. That’s all the meltdown is — a small person who hasn’t been given the chance to practise the most important skill of being a human being, which is the ability to handle the gap between wanting something and getting it.
So the next time the iPad goes off and the screaming starts — because it will, in every house, including the ones with the calmest-looking parents at the school gate — try not to make it about the iPad. The iPad is a symptom. What’s underneath is more important, and more fixable: there aren’t enough other things in their life worth being lost in.
Give them more of those. Whatever shape they take. The kids who have them don’t fight you when the screen goes off. They’ve got somewhere else to go. And in fifteen years’ time, when they’re teenagers being handed a smartphone, the skill they built at three on a living-room carpet is the one that will save them.
If you’d like to come and watch a Tigers class, or bring your little one along to try it on a 14-day VIP pass for £1, you can fill in a form and our team will help you with the next step. No pressure. We just think it’s the kind of thing that helps.
And if judo isn’t your thing — genuinely, it’s fine. Find your version. The science is on your side either way.
— Vince