Screen time tickets
We printed out a bunch of these and started using them this week. Blue for the boy and pink for the girl. So far they’ve taken to them and they’ve already realized they can pool their resources to make them last longer. We’ll see how things go. I’m anticipating they’ll have to start rationing around Thursday. We’d been meaning to do something like this for a while and the recent Parenthacks post got me going.
If you’d like some, these come in 30 and 60 minute denominations and print 10 to a sheet on 8.5×11 paper. You can download tickets in blue, green, pink, silver, and black. If you have more kids than that, you can print the black ones on colored paper. You’ll also need a place to keep unused tickets (we clipped ours to the refrigerator) and a container for redeemed tickets.
These are high-resolution, print-ready PDF files. They are about 800 KB each. You will need a PDF viewer (like Adobe Acrobat) and a printer to use them. The files are each licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
To download, choose your color and “denomination” (30 or 60 minutes):
Download black, 30 minutes, 60 minutes
Download blue, 30 minutes, 60 minutes
Download pink, 30 minutes, 60 minutes
Download green, 30 minutes, 60 minutes
Download silver, 30 minutes, 60 minutes
RSS Feed
Posted 1 year ago
These are killer. Thanks for making them up. We’ve been talking about limiting our 3 year-old’s TV time and I think I’ll give them a try.
Posted 1 year ago
I LOVE THEM! Linked you from my brain bits. We don’t have cable, but movies, computer time, video games, all the way to cyber pets … consume eye time.
THANKS!
Posted 1 year ago
Thanks for these! They will come in handy.
Posted 1 year ago
These are awesome! Thank you.
Now that you’ve done such a nice thing, what are the odds that I could request that you make a 15 minute version as well?
Posted 1 year ago
I thought about making 15 minute denominations too but ran out of steam. I’ll probably get around to it eventually but no promises. What if you just cut the 30 minute ones in half? ;-)
Posted 1 year ago
I’ve been meaning to start doing this. They look great!
Posted 1 year ago
This is fabulous!
Posted 1 year ago
I love this - thank you for making these up.
But (you should have seen this coming!) I’m not satisfied. What about 10- and 20- minute increments? Sometimes 10 minutes is all there is for a little computer time, and it’s a shame if he can’t use it because there isn’t time for a whole 30 minutes.
Pretty please?
Posted 1 year ago
thank you thank you thank you!!!!
Posted 1 year ago
Thanks for doing these. We have for many years had our children “buy” screen time, but I think they may like this way of “buying” even better. We have used charts, but for this, tickets and cash work better. Just in time for summer - School is out!
Posted 1 year ago
Absolutely great idea — thanks for making these available!
Posted 1 year ago
Great idea!
Are the rest of you parents going to give yourself tickets as well and then actually stick to it? I can see myself turning in a ticket, reluctantly getting off the computer when my time is up, and then waiting for the kids to fall asleep before I race back!
Posted 1 year ago
1/2 a 30 is better than not. I find that there are plenty of times in the day where my 6yo wants to just play on the computer or my palm pilot for 15 minutes before dinner or such. Even 15 minutes of TV before school (we don’t ever seem to have enough time in the morning for anything, really).
If you can make ‘em, awesome. If not, I will certainly make due with your terrific creations.
thank you.
Posted 1 year ago
[...] Screen time tickets Do you want a solution to help limit your children’s TV time while teaching them how to make their own choices? John over at flagrantdisregard has created tickets which can be printed and given to your kids. Head over to ParentHacks to read how the ticket system works. [...]
Posted 1 year ago
[...] full article. And this post helpfully gives designs so that you can create the tickets yourself on your [...]
Posted 1 year ago
[...] too long ago, I posted a short snippet in Brain Bits about the screen time tickets designed by flagrant disregard. I bookmarked them with full intentions of printing the tickets out [...]
Posted 10 weeks ago
That is brilliant! The best part is that encouraging siblings to pool their resources for longer screen time also means they’ll have to learn to compromise for mutual benefit - so less fighting with you over their privileges, and less fighting with each other over sharing.