Family media plan
A written household agreement — and the adults are in it.
Everyone sits down, the rules get written, and they apply to the whole house. The content of the plan matters less than the two features that define it: it is explicit, so nobody is improvising at bedtime, and it binds the adults, so it is a rule about the household rather than a rule about being a child. It is the approach most likely to survive a second parent disagreeing, because the disagreement gets had once and written down.
Not what it promises
Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.
- Actually sitting down and writing it, which most households never get to
- Living under your own rule, including the part about phones at dinner
- Revisiting it, because a plan written for a five-year-old is wrong for an eight-year-old
Where it stands
Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
The highest position on whether the rules bind the adults, and the feature that distinguishes the row.
Source: The Big Disconnect
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
Source: Family Media Plan
What to read
Family Media Plan — American Academy of Pediatrics
The template. The value is in the sitting down, not in the form.
The Big Disconnect — Catherine Steiner-Adair
On the adult half, which is the half that gets dropped.
Compared with
Sources for this row
American Academy of Pediatrics. The negotiated-household-contract row is read off this directly, including its insistence that adults are in the plan.
The Big Disconnect
Catherine Steiner-Adair, Harper, 2013. Primary text for the co-viewing and adults-included positions, and an early statement of the technoference argument.