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27 lines
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<title>What's healthier? Time limits, or time boundaries? - Archive - MayVaneDay Studios</title>
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<b>MayVaneDay Studios (Gopher Edition)</b>
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<p><b>What's healthier? Time limits, or time boundaries?</b></p>
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<p><b>published: 9-19-2018</b></p>
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<p>When I was a little kid, my cousin had a DS and a copy of <em>Baby Pals</em>. She’d sometimes bring it with her when we visited my grandma’s house, and several hours would ensue where I’d be hunched over her shoulder, watching her badly take care of “Stinky Poopypants” or whatever crude name she’d come up with and begging her to finally let me have a turn playing. And when she finally relented, I got ten minutes in my own virtual heaven before she took it back. And by the next visit, without fail, my baby would be deleted and poofed up to its own virtual heaven.</p>
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<p>So when I got my own DS on my eighth birthday, I was absolutely elated. It came with a copy of <em>Charlotte’s Web</em>, a game which, to this day, I <em>still</em> haven’t beat. My mother was a bit worried, so right off the bat, she set one rule: that I could only play on my DS:</p>
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<li><p>in the morning, or</p></li>
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<li><p>during car rides.</p></li>
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<p>So what happened was, instead of learning healthy time management habits, every chance I had to play within those time boundaries, I took it. I would spend long hours on the weekend mornings in bed playing instead of getting up and eating breakfast and functioning like a normal human being. Instead of looking out the window and taking note of everything passing me by during car rides, I would play. And every night after I was tucked into bed, I’d play until I eventually passed out. It was a “now or never” time, except all the times I wanted to maybe play with a friend, or distract myself from a particularly traumatic event, it was never, and every other time was now.</p>
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<p>I don’t know exactly when she stopped enforcing the rule. Maybe it was the period through middle school where I forgot it existed, and she did too. A silent agreement to put the boundaries behind us since they clearly weren’t needed anymore.</p>
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<p>I got a 3DS late 2016. But this time around, the dynamic was different. I wasn’t in elementary school anymore, and I could be trusted to manage my own screen time. So, almost paradoxically, without the boundaries keeping me from wasting my every waking moment gaming, my video game time every day… dropped.</p>
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<p>I think time limits are healthier than time boundaries. Because, with boundaries, the “now or never” factor comes into play (no pun intended)- I gotta do The Thing <em>now</em>, or I won’t be able to do it at all today! But with time limits, I get two or so hours to do The Thing if I want, and I can choose when I do The Thing: before homework? After homework? At three in the morning to lull myself to sleep after a brutal bout of insomnia? It’s all up to me.</p>
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<p>I can certainly see why time boundaries might be more attractive to a parent. It’s easier to look at a clock and judge if you’re within a certain time range than keep track of every minute you play. So maybe one might use it for a little kid who can easily be picked up and moved away from a TV screen. But eventually you’re going to have to teach them that it’s their responsibility to manage their own screen time and that you can’t be there to police them forever.</p>
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