My observations are identical. The longer you let them on it, the worse their behaviour is when you take it away. After not letting them have it for a few days, they stop asking for it... and then one day you let them have it back and the whole cycle begins again.
Now my kids are mostly banned from iPads and other electronic gadgets - I allow them enough exposure to familiarize themselves with how to use them if and when they need to and maybe watch the odd TV show on Netflix and that's all.
I understand the attachment it causes, as a computer programmer, it's uncomfortable when someone tells me I cannot have my computer for the weekend. I have to remind myself constantly that this technological wonder I spend 8 hours a day in front of isn't what life is about. Life is what happens when you shut off the computer and go and live it - which is odd, because I can quite happily go camping and leave all my gadgets at home and live primitively for weeks at a time, no cell phone, no computer, no electricity, no running water. Somehow my brain separates the electronic life as part of our culture, which has somehow forgotten how to live without all this technology at our fingertips.
I guess what I want for my kids is that they don't form this mental dependency on technology. That they realize it's just a tool to enhance their own natural abilities, which I'm sorry to say, many kids just don't appear to be learning while they're stuck in front of their screens every waking moment.
Now my kids are mostly banned from iPads and other electronic gadgets - I allow them enough exposure to familiarize themselves with how to use them if and when they need to and maybe watch the odd TV show on Netflix and that's all.
I understand the attachment it causes, as a computer programmer, it's uncomfortable when someone tells me I cannot have my computer for the weekend. I have to remind myself constantly that this technological wonder I spend 8 hours a day in front of isn't what life is about. Life is what happens when you shut off the computer and go and live it - which is odd, because I can quite happily go camping and leave all my gadgets at home and live primitively for weeks at a time, no cell phone, no computer, no electricity, no running water. Somehow my brain separates the electronic life as part of our culture, which has somehow forgotten how to live without all this technology at our fingertips.
I guess what I want for my kids is that they don't form this mental dependency on technology. That they realize it's just a tool to enhance their own natural abilities, which I'm sorry to say, many kids just don't appear to be learning while they're stuck in front of their screens every waking moment.