One rainy afternoon, you hand your child a tablet just to buy yourself 30 peaceful minutes. Totally understandable. Then 30 minutes becomes two hours, bedtime gets pushed back, dinner becomes a negotiation and suddenly your usually cheerful child is snapping over the smallest things. Sound familiar? Rain itself is not necessarily making children cranky. The bigger issue can be what changes around it. More indoor time often means more recreational screen time, less movement, fewer social interactions and disrupted sleep routines. Research links higher recreational screen use with shorter sleep and some unfavourable measures of behavioural conduct, although screen time alone does not explain every mood change.
