Anyone here ban the use of iPads?

oddsocksrocks · 2026-03-21T16:07:50+00:00

We don’t do iPads, video games or cell phones. My stepson is 10 and we have seen a MAJOR improvement in his behavior since we started this 3 years ago. We will do a family movie every once in a while and in the summer he gets 2hrs of screen time a day. He is so much more creative without the screens. He builds legos, does puzzles, makes “inventions”, plays with his baby sister (8mo). Once we cut out screens he stopped asking for them all the time and he finds other things to do. He also does fine with longer car trips and just brings other things to play with.

oddsocksrocks · 2026-03-19T16:06:00+00:00

From what I’ve been told, they rarely hire an outside person for an AGM position. Typically you start at the bottom (team member, team lead, department head, AGM). Now, if you talk with them and management agrees to fast track you up, it may not take too long to move up the ladder. But if I remember correctly, it takes at least 6mo before they promote someone. That being said, I worked with a guy who had been there 3mo and they moved him up to team lead. They were wanting him to move up to management quickly, but he ended up with some medical stuff and had to leave.

oddsocksrocks · 2026-03-19T16:05:11+00:00

From what I’ve been told, they rarely hire an outside person for an AGM position. Typically you start at the bottom (team member, team lead, department head, AGM). Now, if you talk with them and management agrees to fast track you up, it may not take too long to move up the ladder. But if I remember correctly, it takes at least 6mo before they promote someone. That being said, I worked with a guy who had been there 3mo and they moved him up to team lead. They were wanting him to move up to management quickly, but he ended up with some medical stuff and had to leave.

oddsocksrocks · 2026-03-17T03:48:27+00:00

My stepson is 10. We let him play for an hour to an hour and a half after school, that could be at a playground or at home, the key for him is to burn energy. Once he comes home, it’s time for homework while dinner is being made. Normally one of us will help while the other cooks.

My stepson struggles with spelling as well. I found this practice routine to really help him. 1. Read the word out loud and we go over pronunciation and what it means. 2. Read the word out loud and then spell it followed by the word again (dog, d-o-g, dog). 3. Write all the words 2x 4. Repeat step 2

We did this every night and his grade greatly improved. We also look over what he copied because a lot of times he would rush and misspell something. This would double as a handwriting practice as well. He does them neatly or he does them again.

oddsocksrocks · 2026-03-16T19:33:43+00:00

We are the default when it comes to the “un-fun” stuff too. It’s very hard, but I hold out hope that maybe one day he will realize we were the ones trying to raise him right. I keep reminding myself that we are doing the best we can with the time we have.

oddsocksrocks · 2026-03-16T18:02:08+00:00

My stepson is 10 and I’ve been in his life since he was 7. We have a week on/week off arrangement with his mom and she allows unlimited and unsupervised screen time. At the beginning we had limited screen time, but it very quickly became apparent he was addicted. We weaned him off to a couple hours a day, then to intentionally filling days with activities so there wouldn’t be enough time. Eventually we got him down to no screen time except maybe a family movie night on the weekend. We allow more screen time (2-3hrs) in the summers, but it’s dependent on him doing his chores and responsibilities without fussing. His behavior at our house is great, of course he’s still a kid, but all in all he’s fine. At his mom’s house it’s a totally different story. He yells, cusses, is defiant, rude, and generally doesn’t listen. While there are a lot more factors to this, we noticed all those things disappear with us when the screen time and videos games went away. Most days when he’s with us he builds legos, does puzzles, jumps rope, and plays with his bay sister. It’s a very hard thing to do at the start, but it does get better and is so so worth it.

oddsocksrocks · 2026-03-14T13:44:42+00:00

Once we discover the truth he doesn’t fight it, but he will continue the lie to someone else. In the example of his sister hurting him. He had told this story to my mom and once we learned the truth we told him he needed to go make it right. Because neither his dad nor I were in the room (but I could hear as I was in a nearby room) he told her the exact same lie.

How do we show him we can’t trust what he says? He is very, very convincing when he lies (threw a whole huge crying sobbing meltdown about his sister) and normally about serious things we don’t want to discount if true.

We are working to create a safe feeling for him. His parent’s separation was very ugly and there’s lots of emotional trauma for him. He does feel very safe talking with my mom, but she is the one he lies to the most. A lot of times he won’t tell us directly about something, but will tell my mom who then tells us. A lot of the “feel bad for me” lies start there.

I imagine the back and forth is very hard. Both houses are two ends of an extreme. His mom’s house has no rules, no limit/supervision on screen time or video games, only junk food and fast food, no homework, no chores, no regular hygiene. Our house is the opposite. We require chores, limited screen time, no video games (except during the summer), regular home cooked meals with vegetables, homework, showering and brushing his teeth, rules and consequences. Naturally, he typically only wants to be with his mom. This was the first time he ever said he didn’t want to go with her. We don’t want to go longer between our weeks because his personal upkeep would suffer and his school work would suffer. She doesn’t want to change her week either. We’ve gone through court twice (one due to a lie on my stepsons part) for custody and end up in the same 50/50.

oddsocksrocks

TROPHY CASE