“I hate screens, I say it every day,” Hannah Porteous-Butler, mother of three children aged 13, 10 and seven tells me. “They cause so much anxiety in me and my husband – and so much extra work. My youngest screams and shouts when we switch off her laptop.
“We used to have no screens on weekdays but when my eldest, who is autistic, moved to secondary school which involves so many transitions between classes during the day we realised he’d come home exhausted. He needs to chill out after his homework (if we gave him a screen first we wouldn’t be able to get him off it). He uses screens to regulate, to zone out and to learn to do stuff, like Minecraft.”
Until recently, though, her son would also “scream, shout and storm off” when the time came to switch his device off.
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“He’d feel ‘fizzy’ for hours or days afterwards,” says Hannah, founder of consultancy The People Practice Group which supports companies to retain working parents. “We are now very clear at what time we’ll be switching off laptops and we have no screens in the morning because we couldn’t get him out of the house. He can’t turn it off so I’ll give a five-four-three-two-one countdown and do it myself.”
