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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
It helps to have the number before a school meeting, because "this is too much" sounds like an opinion while a benchmark sounds like a standard. Some programmes run far past it, and those hours come out of somewhere, usually sleep or the unstructured time a tired child needs most. If you are asking for homework to be reduced as an accommodation, the benchmark is what turns a complaint into a specific request.
God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear (Quran 2:286). A workload that has stopped matching what a child can carry is worth naming out loud, kindly, with a number attached.
البقرة
لَا يُكَلِّفُ ٱللَّهُ نَفۡسًا إِلَّا وُسۡعَهَاۚ لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتۡ وَعَلَيۡهَا مَا ٱكۡتَسَبَتۡۗ رَبَّنَا لَا تُؤَاخِذۡنَآ إِن نَّسِينَآ أَوۡ أَخۡطَأۡنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تَحۡمِلۡ عَلَيۡنَآ إِصۡرࣰ ا كَمَا حَمَلۡتَهُۥ عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبۡلِنَاۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تُحَمِّلۡنَا مَا لَا طَاقَةَ لَنَا بِهِۦۖ وَٱعۡفُ عَنَّا وَٱغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَٱرۡحَمۡنَآۚ أَنتَ مَوۡلَىٰنَا فَٱنصُرۡنَا عَلَى ٱلۡقَوۡمِ ٱلۡكَٰفِرِينَ
God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad- ‘ Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or make mistakes. Lord, do not burden us as You burdened those before us. Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Protector, so help us against the disbelievers.’
Qur’an 2:286read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a study of 182 students watching a video lecture, how prone someone was to mind wandering predicted how much they took from it, and longhand note-taking was tested as one countermeasure. Nobody there was doing homework and nobody was measuring how many minutes a night is right. So it supports the shape of the point, that attention fades and hours stop converting into learning, and not the ten minute figure itself, which comes from paediatric guidance rather than from a trial.
Kane MJ, Smeekens BA, von Bastian CC, Lurquin JH, Carruth NP, Miyake A. (2017). A combined experimental and individual-differences investigation into mind wandering during a video lecture.. Journal of experimental psychology. General doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Past a certain point the extra hour gets done in a drifting, half present state, so it costs sleep without buying learning.
There is a rough ladder for tech overuse. Build a schedule together with some outside control at first, add substitutes once the person can stop for a while, then more intensive care, and residential only when someone is entirely taken over by it.
Write down three to five things you actually enjoy, small ones, and do one of them a day. That is the whole instruction.
Quiet room, clear desk, phone in a drawer, and you are still nowhere near the work. When the outside distractions go, the restlessness does not leave with them. It moves inside.