After a high last week, on the back of her personal training regimen, Smiths Beach’s Lisa McLure says her family then hit a dip in the lockdown rollercoaster.
And the main culprit? The iPad, with Lisa suggesting her kids – Angus, 10, and Evie, six – have a change in attitude after spending too much time on devices in lockdown.

“I’m looking forward to the end of lockdown.

I know a few weeks ago I said I wanted to relish this time with the kids, but some days I just wish a magical angel would come down and give me some time to myself. It’s been normal family rollercoaster stuff that you’d get any time of the year, but magnified by the sheer volume of time we’re spending together in lockdown.

Last weekend I wanted to concentrate on me for a bit and get my personal training business on track, so the kids were on their iPads more than usual. But iPad time was creeping in further and further and after a while they don’t want to get off.

Trying to get them off is like getting blood out of a stone. It’s so exhausting getting them outside and off their screens. It’s a catch-22: they enjoy being on their screens, with their mates, and I get stuff done.

Yet when they get back into the world, they’re not very nice. When they’ve been on their devices for a length of time they turn into surly children. Their whole demeanour changes. You can really tell the difference in kids when they have been on their iPads for a long time.

It’s very much like sugar. I don’t know what it is about the screen, whether it’s the flashing images, but it changes them. So many parents say the same thing. We always think we’re the only ones but we’re not. Parents have their own work to do and they feel bad they’re not taking their kids out.

Anyway, the other day it turned into a bit of a screaming match and everyone was over everyone.

I start off asking nicely and then it slowly becomes a high pitch ‘I’m Mary Poppins keeping it together’ voice. Then all of a sudden, I’m losing it and tipping over the edge into cold blooded rage and an axe murderer. Let’s just say I was not using my inside voice when a family walked past our house and the windows were open. I saw her later on the beach and said I was sorry, and she just said I should hear her.

After all that we banned the iPads for three days and it was amazing, the kids actually played Lego together. Just hearing their laughter and happiness was such a change, having fun and enjoying being kids. It only lasted two days though and then they wanted to strangle each other again.

I told the teachers we had a couple of mental health days last week and they said we absolutely did the right thing, to take days off and come back to it refreshed, and don’t put pressure on myself.

Now we’re back to limited iPad time, just 4pm-6pm. You have to set limits. It’s easy to let them play more than that, but then you pay the penalty at the other end. I swear: even if they’ve been on their devices for five hours, and I have to drag them kicking and screaming to go for a bike ride, at dinner time every night they say their favourite thing that day was going for a ride or being on the beach. That’s what they remember. They never say they had the best day because they were on their iPads.

I’ll take a picture of the kids on the beach and put it on social media and then other parents feel bad they’re not doing the same, but those pictures don’t show the four hours before that on the iPad and the drama involved in getting out the door. It took two hours one day just to get out the door – ‘where’s your shoes and towel, what do you mean you can’t find your wetsuit’.

Some days by 3pm I’m so tired and over it. Some days I just want to build an adult fort and climb in. Yesterday I cracked the sh*ts and sat on the couch but then Jay my personal trainer texted me to say, ‘come on, get up and go for a run’. He must be spying on me.

So I did get up, go for a run in the dark, put my headphones on and it was awesome.

Tim came home from work and cooked dinner, made the beds and we worked as a team.

Hopefully we won’t have this lockdown time again, but at the same time my family won’t be this age ever again. It’s a weird juxtaposition: loving the time together but desperately yearning for some time to myself.

It’s like when the kids go away for the weekend, I think ‘great, I’ll clean up and have some quiet time’. But once the house is clean, I miss them and want them back.”

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