For parents · 3-minute read
Watching or making?
Not all screen time is the same. Here is a simple way to tell the difference, and three small things you can do this week.
Same laptop, same 30 minutes
Two children sit at the same laptop for half an hour. One watches videos. The other builds a small game where a cat chases a mouse. From across the room, they look exactly the same.
They are not. When a child watches, the screen decides what happens next. When a child makes, they decide, and then they have to make it work.
Watching
- Someone else made every decision
- Ends when the video ends
- Leaves nothing behind
Making
- Your child makes every decision
- Ends when the problem is solved
- Leaves something they can show you
What is happening inside that little game
Building the cat-and-mouse game looks like play. Here is what your child is actually learning:
"When I press the arrow key, the cat moves."
Cause and effect, written as instructions a computer can follow. events
"Keep chasing the mouse until you catch it."
Repeating a step until something is true, like "stir until it thickens" in a recipe. loops
"Add one point every time the cat wins."
Keeping track of something that changes, like a scoreboard. variables
"It doesn't work. Why?"
Making a guess, testing it, and trying again. This is the most useful skill on this list, and not only for coding. debugging
Three things to try this week
You don't need to know anything about coding for any of these.
Ask "show me," not "what did you do?"
"What did you do today?" usually gets "nothing." Try:
"Can you show me how it works?"Explaining their work out loud is how children find out what they really understand, and you get to see what they learned.
When they're stuck, don't fix it
It's tempting to help. Ask two questions instead:
"What have you tried so far?" → "What could you try next?"Getting stuck and getting unstuck is the lesson.
The goal isn't less screen time.
It's more of it spent making.
Want your child to learn this with a teacher? Try a free lesson →