Richard Wadsworth<\/a> recently went viral after showing his own personal strategy for getting his kids to do something other than scrolling. It could be the perfect solution for parents to not only break screen addiction, but instill some other healthy ritual as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the clip, we first see Wadsworth\u2019s tween son doing deltoid exercises with dumbbells. Which he apparently got up at 6:30 am to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What could possibly incentivize practically anyone, let alone a preteen to wake up at the crack of dawn to lift weights? Read on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wadsworth then showed a typed out list of various tasks that must be performed before even setting eyes on a phone or tablet. The list included a short workout in the form of one mile on the treadmill or 20 minutes of another exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wadsworth explained that rather than enforcing strict rules, this method provides necessary structure without taking away choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not forcing my son to exercise every day, but I am setting rules and boundaries around his screen time,\u201d he said. \u201cHe decided he wanted to have more time after school to play with his friend. And so in order to do that, he realized that he\u2019d need to wake up a little bit earlier and exercise in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to exercise, the list included domestic chores like cleaning the bedroom and shared areas, finishing homework, doing laundry, preparing for the next day\u2026and, perhaps most importantly\u2026making sure the toilet is flushed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have all of their screens locked away. And if they want access to any of them, they need to come ask us and we\u2019ll go through the list together. And they\u2019re not getting their screens until the list is done,\u201d Wadsworth continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also drew a comparison between screen time and sugary sweets, noting how most parents probably wouldn\u2019t routinely allow kids to eat dessert before a nutritious meal, but instead allow it to be a treat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJust as you would hopefully have your kids eat dinner before they had their dessert, you should probably be having them do something positive\u2026before they get on their screens.\u201d Hence why he tries to get his kids to complete their list before going to the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in case you\u2019re wondering how Wadsworth\u2019s son feels about all this, he reported having \u201cso much energy for school\u201d feeling \u201cso much better\u201d since his dad introduced the to-do list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nBottom line: kids need guidance from their parents. And Wadsworth recommends clear cut boundaries to help them develop good habits, \u201cbecause if you don\u2019t do it, nobody else is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wadsworth\u2019s parenting hack was well received, with quite a few grown adults saying they could benefit from this type of boundary-setting in their own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven I\u2019m addicted to this screen. I have to tell myself to put it down all the time and I\u2019m a grown adult. Kids definitely need this!\u201d one user wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another added, \u201cI need someone to do this for me (I\u2019m 28).\u201d To which Wadsworth replied, \u201cwe all need parents sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even with potential TikTok bans, social media isn\u2019t going anywhere. The sooner parents can implement guidelines like these, the better equipped their kids will be at balancing tech savviness with tech dependence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A brilliant example of using positive incentive. We know too much screen time is not good for us. We also know that younger folks are particularly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/731761461_1530882121913941_6898628811731668816_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9769,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767\/revisions\/9769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}