I have limits in mind, but I don’t necesssarily articulate them to my kids as such. If I don’t want them having screen time I will just say “not right now, we have better things to do” and that is expected to be the end of it. I don’t pick a set ammount of time because I prefer to be flexible in when I allow screen time. Some seasons or events lend themselves to media use more than others. Sometimes- like on a beautiful sunny day I would rather they get *no* screen time and just send them outside, and other times like when waiting for a sibling at speech therapy or a long car trip in traffic I am fine with them playing games (usually learning games) on the tablet if they are tired of our audiobooks. If both little kids have been sick and we have been up all night I prefer to put on movies so we all can get some rest and stay quiet. I want to use screen time as a tool to help my family, and teach my kids that it is a tool to be used appropriately, not a god to be worshiped nor something wicked we have to limit. I try to teach the same thing about sweets and candy- a nice treat or temporary diversion but not what you need to be healthy and strong.
All these things like computers, tablets, 987 TV channels streaming to every room in the house, etc are only going to increase. Our society will never again gather around the radio in the evening for an hour and that is the only media exposure a family has- although that was the reality of growing up for my parents. I feellike I need to teach skills to deal with the situation we have now, not keep looking back to how I wish it was.
With my older kids I had a constant battle over screen time. Part of the problem is that we lived with my mom who used TV as a babysitter with me growing up, and perferred to not deal with little boys mucking up her home. To keep the peace they watched a lot of TV. Then, when I had my own home, we cut off cable TV (no tablets or computers back then) for about 8 years to try to combat the beast and while that was temporary help, both of my older kids consume much more media even now than I would prefer. However, they are adults and making their own choices now.
I found hard and fast rules can be used by the child to get screen time when its not really needed or warranted. So, this time I am trying to model appropriate choices and attitudes and we will see how it turns out, but I think its going better so far.