My kids watch screens, some afternoons more than I’d like to admit. But the hour before bed is the one stretch of the day where the rule doesn’t bend: no screens, full stop. Of everything we changed about screen time, this is the piece that mattered most for sleep.
Why That Hour Specifically
It wasn’t a guess. The nights that came right after screen time were reliably harder – more stalling, more trouble settling down, more of me sitting in a dark room longer than I wanted to. Cutting screens out of that hour didn’t fix bedtime completely, but it took one variable off the table.
What Fills the Hour Instead
Books, mostly. Some quiet talking. Nothing elaborate – the point was never to replace a screen with an equally stimulating activity, it was to let things wind down instead of staying wound up.
The Same Rule Applies After Waking
We do the same thing on the other end of the day – no screens the first hour after waking either. Between the two, screens got pushed out of the parts of the day where they were doing the most damage and left mostly alone everywhere else.
The full rule, and what to do on the nights someone tries to push past it, is in The Screen-Light Reset.
More on the routines that make bedtime and mornings easier at our Parenting hub.
