A first-time mother is paved with good intentions, that and a complete lack of reality. One can’t fault them for this because there’s no possible way to prepare a person for parenting, unless while she’s reading “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” she’s poked in the eye, being yelled at, tugged on, folding clothes with one hand all while sitting on the toilet in front of an audience. Even this is slight work.

You’ve heard the saying — when the first baby drops his binky, mom boils it before reuse. The second baby’s binky gets a rinse under the faucet. By the third, mom wipes the binky on her shirt and shoves it back into baby’s mouth. As the fourth child, I believe my mom coated the binky in nighttime cough syrup to sanitize it.

While pregnant with my first, I would not even drink Diet Coke. I hate fruit, but for my fetus I choked down all types, including those chalky Bolthouse Farm fruit smoothies in the hopes she would come out multiplying fractions. This arduous focus on parenting best practices continued well into her babyhood. During my parental preparation stage, I read in a random magazine that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended toddlers not be allowed to watch TV as their heads would explode due to over stimulation. I was orthodoxical about my toddler not getting exposed to the morally corrupt “Dora the Explorer.” Until I had my second kid.

This all went out the window. Seriously, I can remember the day I had finally gotten my infant son to nap, so foolishly I thought I could close my eyes for a moment. This is when a 3-year-old Scarlett waddled in looking for entertainment, aka mommy. I drowsily reached over to the nightstand, lifted the lid on my laptop and went searching for Nickelodeon. Dora for the win.

Such a slippery slope as life became so much easier with the introduction of screens, or so I thought. The Nintendo Switch accompanies us to dinners, road trips, doctor’s appointments, even to Grandma’s. I’ve replaced the binky with a Switch. Screens are so pervasive in our lives we have designated times when they’re put away so we can talk about the day, only to have them back out as the last dish hits the washer.

Devices offer a moment of solace to tired, overworked parents yearning for a minute to talk with their partner. Often when we head out to dinner, Switch tightly grasped in tiny hands, we see other families with kids focused on a device while adults chat and laugh, enjoying a limited reprieve. Being in this situation myself, I’ve glanced around spotting the disapproving glances as if I should be dressed in a clown costume performing for the kiddies instead of relying on a screen to entertain. I would remind these people, it was common in the 1960s for families to eat dinner around the TV, and check out how those kids turned out.

Balance is the name of the game when it comes to devices and children. Screen addiction is real; it creeps up and it changes the mental and physical health of children. Like most addictions, screens can hit your brain’s pleasure centers, releasing those same natural chemicals you get when going on a roller coaster, eating cheesecake or scoring a goal. That conditioned euphoria eventually leads to actual cravings to sit in front of whatever console, computer or TV to get a fix. A key piece of addiction is ignoring other normal activities or experiences for screen time. Remove that stimuli and prepare for the withdrawals and agitation that accompany it.

Winter is our household’s best friend when it comes to screen addiction. Like a sleuth of bears (that is actually what a group of bears is called), our family hunkers down, grows that long fur coat and settles into a season of torpor with our screens. Some ski, some sled, some head south; we game. As the spring thaw arrives, so goes the screen cleanse. As in any other cleanse, it can get messy.

Monday marked our first day of time restrictions, codes placed on the home screen and a push to get outside instead of strewn in the gaming chair; meaning it was our first day of tantrums, excuses and negotiations. Torpor no more. Turning back to the Academy of Pediatrics, I got a guide on the process of reprogramming these developing brains as they get reintroduced to a warmer, screenless world. While two of my children can self-regulate, pulling themselves away to play soccer, Legos or just wrestle for supremacy, another is very connected to his device.

We’re following a three-step process to get him unplugged. First, screens are not allowed when we get home from school or work for an hour. Instead, we either practice piano or sit at the bar for a snack while we break down the day’s events. Next, we agreed on an amount of time device play is allowed before we move on to the next activity; that time cannot be more than two hours. An addendum to this rule is no tantrums if this time is cut short in order to move on to the next activity. With soccer and baseball season underway, this is happening more often. Last of all, devices are off by 8 p.m. The rule of no screens during mealtimes still stands.

These are the rules, signed in blood, set in stone. No matter what, we’re going to follow them. A third-time mother is paved with good intentions with a complete lack of reality.

Meg Sanders worked in broadcast journalism for over a decade but has since turned her life around to stay closer to home in Ogden. Her three children keep her indentured as a taxi driver, stylist and sanitation worker. In her free time, she likes to read, write, lift weights and go to concerts with her husband of 17 years.

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