How to create a screen-free routine to make time with your family

Disconnect without feeling guilty

There is no need to demonize screens: they are part of everyday life and can also have an educational or calming use. The challenge is not to ban, but to make sense of what we are looking at. In other words, it’s not so much a war against screens as a rebalancing.

First step: observe. When and why does your child watch a cartoon? Why is he bored? Why do you need to breathe? Identifying these moments helps propose realistic alternatives. A screen-free routine should not be punishing, but calming for everyone.

Create “screen break” rituals.

To initiate change, it is best to define a clear framework. For example: no screen before school, nor during meals, nor an hour before bed. These moments become “white zones,” where everyone knows the phone stays off.

Some families even turn disconnection into a game: a whole day without a screen, an “unplugged” weekend, a dinner where they leave their cell phones at the entrance. You can make it a weekly ritual, with a special meal or outing. The idea is to make the experience fun rather than restrictive.

Rediscover the pleasure of simple activities

The hardest part isn’t taking away the screens: it’s knowing what to put in their place. And often children don’t need much. A game of cards, a cake to prepare, a walk in the neighborhood or a salt dough workshop is enough to restart the dynamic.

The goal is not to fill every minute, but to do it relearning to savor slow time: reading a book, getting a little bored, inventing a story. This “emptiness” is precious, because it stimulates creativity and allows the child to focus on himself again – a fundamental need that screens, through their constant solicitation, often prevent from being satisfied.

Parents need to play along too

It’s difficult to ask a child to put the tablet down while you’re mechanically scrolling through the phone. The parental model remains decisive. In many homes, the idea of ​​a “collective disconnection” creates a new complicity: we put all the screens in a box before dinner, we set the table together, we chat. These small gestures create coherence and defuse tensions.

Educating without screens does not mean living without technology, but learning to master it. Demonstrating that other pleasures exist – a walk, a story, a discussion – is already teaching freedom.

Transform the test over time

After the first 24 hours without a screen, often the hardest part is avoiding the return of the DSLR. For the routine to remain, it is better to establish reference parameters: a fixed time slot to watch a cartoon, a “Saturday cinema” with the family, a quiet moment without the phone. The clearer the picture, the less subject to negotiation it becomes.

Some parents even post a “family contract” on the refrigerator: who can use what, when, and why. It’s not an on-screen police, but a way to anchor healthy habits.

A disconnection that reconnects

Reducing time spent in front of the screen is not just a question of health or attention: it is a way to recreate connections. Let’s rediscover table discussions, group games and unfiltered laughter. And when screens take their place again (because they keep it, of course), they become part of a more just balance.

The next time you propose a “day without screens”, don’t present it as a challenge, but as a parenthesis: a day to simply rediscover yourself. Because, ultimately, disconnecting is above all reconnecting: to yourself, to others and to reality.

Source: Madmoizelle