Phone battles at bedtime?

This clever wi-fi hack is here to help with the screen-to-bed transition each night, and Goodto.com's editor swears by it

Stephanie Lowe knows she’s not alone when she says parenting can be a tough gig. Just five years into raising a little human and every day there’s something new to learn. And as Goodto.com’s family editor, she’s aware the parenting landscape has changed hugely in the last two decades, and that the main challenges parents face today didn’t exist when she was younger—such as the internet and ‘screen time’. And both can sometimes turn bedtime into a battleground. But now there’s a new battle plan to help.

Whether they're using your phone or their own—according to YouGov, over half of children under seven already own a mobile phone—screen time is a daily occurrence for most kids these days and it arguably has a bad reputation. Done in moderation, screen time can actually be a brilliant tool for visual learners, fact-finding, playing brain games, and helping to make your children more independent as they grow.

Like when Stephanie’s son, Ted, found a snail and they spent the afternoon on her phone researching all about them, how to look after them, how often they poo, and what they eat (apples, grapes, and leaves apparently).

Stephanie believes screens will be present in your child’s life, so it’s more about teaching them how to use them safely and helping them understand the limits and why they need to be set. And this is where EE can help. 

“The device-level WiFi controls from EE let you apply specific safety settings for kids, separate from the rest of the home,” she says. “Sometimes keeping them safe looks like holding their hand while walking through a carpark, other times it’s saying ‘enough’ to screen time and helping them turn it off. With EE it just makes it so much easier to know I’ve scheduled a WiFi freeze just for him and it will switch off when it’s meant to.”

Before setting anything, Stephanie works on her mindset. Instead of parent versus child, it's them teaming up to tackle the problem (turning off a device when he might not be ready to). Then talking about how long his game is and how long he would like to play for, and agreeing on a time limit.

“Some nights Ted’s okay with this and it’s smooth sailing, other nights he’s not too happy and there’s a protest, and that's okay too,” says Stephanie. “Overall the EE WiFi safety settings work brilliantly because it’s all too easy to get distracted by pre-bedtime routines and accidentally leave a screen on for hours before bed. Then the battle is all too real.”