Why parents avoid the easiest way to fix their kids’ crappy behavior

One time, an exasperated fellow parent was venting to me about how rude and defiant her kids were being.

She was a great, engaged mother, but she was running out of ideas.

I suggested that there was probably a fairly straightforward solution to her problem. I’d realized that there was one terrible influence in my kids’ life, one that consistently turned them into little monsters.

She took what I said to heart and tried it for a while.

The next time I saw her, she was flabbergasted at how well it worked.

I’d be willing to bet that, if you’re at your wits’ end with your kids’ behavior, you could apply this fix and start seeing massive changes right away.

The concept is not that difficult to grasp, but following through is.

An easy but difficult fix

What did I tell my fellow parent, based on my own experience with my kids?

You must ruthlessly cut your kids’ screen time — all the way to zero if need be.

The younger your kids are, the more ruthless you have to be.

This is extremely difficult to follow through on because:

• Your kids will be mad and make you the bad guy
• You’ll have to work a lot harder to keep them engaged with more productive and positive activities

I’ve written a lot about quitting alcohol and caffeine and the cheap dopamine hits they provide.

I’ve written about how they sap our energy and passion for real life as our brains get trained to focus on how and when we can get our next hit.

In my humble opinion, video games and cheap internet content create the child equivalent of having a substance abuse problem.

Kids quickly lose their attention span after too much screen time. (Credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

Zombified kids

Kids become zombies while they have it, and they get angry and agitated when they don’t. Oh, and their attention spans are completely shot, too.

In some ways, this isn’t their fault.

Game companies have designed their products to become as addictive as possible.