I have two daughters, ages five and eight, and increasingly over the years, we have had to set pretty rigid guidelines to reduce the amount of screen time they get. When they were young and I was a new mom, I was very lenient on how much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse they could watch. I’d estimate that they got an hour of screen time every day–often more. For someone like me who watches little to no TV, this was unacceptable. The screen had become my babysitter.

After noticing a correlation between their poor behavior (defiance, poor choices, whining, lack of cooperation, fighting), I realized it was time to set some clear boundaries. I also noticed that late-night screen time led to sleep issues. The girls were literally wired at bedtime when I tucked them into their bunk beds. And my older daughter had become a screen addict–tearing her away had become nearly impossible.

Screen time was a problem.

It was two years ago that genius hit me: screenkends! School days called our attention to homework and piano lessons. Monday through Friday were workdays for Mom and Dad, too. I realized that we should earn our entertainment on the weekends with our hard work during the week. It only felt right that our screen time should be a luxury we enjoy exclusively on the weekends. So we break our workday fast with a family movie night on Friday nights (complete with popcorn), and the girls are allowed one hour of TV or movies on Saturday and Sunday.

The girls are really clear about this rule–if it’s a school day, no screen time. Mom and Dad have even started docking their phones from the minute they get home until after the girls are asleep. We’ve noticed the behavior problems we were experiencing have diminished significantly. Our family seems to be much happier.