Ever try taking a device away from a child deeply engrossed in a game of Toca Boca or an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba? Howls of protest, stomping of feet and all-out tantrums aren’t unusual, many parents have learned -- even after the kids have been given a two-minute warning their time is almost up.

But maybe that’s where things go wrong.

New research has found that while many parents believe that two-minute warnings help a child prepare for the fun coming to an end, those warnings often make the transition even worse.

The study comes from researchers at the University of Washington’s Computing for Healthy Living & Learning Lab. They asked 27 families with children aged 1 to 5 to keep detailed diaries of their kids’ screen time and how they transitioned away from screens when their time was up. The researchers wanted to hear about why screens got turned off and how upset their children were.

Senior author Julie Kientz, an associate professor of human-centered design and engineering, says they focused on young kids because there hasn’t been a lot of study on how these kids handle technology. And, she says, these are the kids who are going to grow up in an age when portable screens are pretty much everywhere.

“The ubiquity of mobile devices has... meant that the nature of screen time is changing drastically and television is not just in a single room in the house,” she told CTVNews.ca by email.

The parents reported a few things made the end of screen time easy. If a friend knocked on the door to play, it was easy for kids to turn off the device, for example. Same with reaching a destination in a car, or needing to leave for school. Those were considered natural transitions.

But two-minute warnings often resulted in yelps of resistance -- which even the researchers didn’t expect.

“We were indeed surprised by the finding that advance warnings resulted in rockier transitions for many parents,” Kietnz said.

“This is a common practice, including one that we ourselves as parents had used in many situations, such as leaving the playground or getting ready for bed.”

Kientz admits she’s not a child development expert, but she suspects part of the problem is that preschoolers are at an age when they are experimenting with their power over their parents, testing out what they can achieve with tantrums.

“One guess I have as a parent of a preschooler is that giving a warning can feel like opening up an invitation to negotiate to a child, which can prime them for a power struggle,” she said.

Another explanation is that many young children simply do not have a good idea of what two minutes actually feels like, and they may feel like their parents are cutting their allotted time short.

It’s also important to note that the study found that most transitions from screens actually went pretty well: 59 per cent of the time, the children didn’t really react at all; another 19 per cent of the time, the kids were happy to put the screens down. It was only in about 22 per cent of the transitions that the kids reacted badly and caused a fuss.

But it’s those bad transitions that parents tend to remember and dread the most, Kientz said.

Her study also found it’s the kids who decide to end screen time simply because they have lost interest. Many parents might think that never happens to their child, but the study found that was the case 25 per cent of the time.

As a parent herself, Kientz has found that finding “natural stopping points” for screen time work better than setting actual time limits. Those stopping points include the end of a video, the end of a game, or the end of a movie. That’s why she’d like to see shows, games and video channels find ways to make it easier for parents to turn off devices.

“I would love to see content developers provide more natural stopping points in the media and games that they develop that come in a variety of times (e.g., five minute, 10 minute, 15 minute chunks),” she said.

“In addition.... I would love to see more apps provide the ability to disable features like autoplay, suggested videos, or ‘play another game’ buttons.”

And of course, the best tactic to avoid tantrums is to create set screen time rules that everyone agrees to -- and then stick to them.

“I think that clear expectations and consistency are definitely the keys,” she said.