Cartoons at after school club?

I would be annoyed at this. There are lots of ways to provide quiet restful occupation for children without screens. A screen only rests your body, not your brain, and its childrens brains which need a rest after school.

Playing outside, simple repetitive activities like colouring, or easy card games etc are better.

ASC put tvs on because they have too many tired kids, sometimes poor facilities and equipment, and are poorly paid. Its stop gap care for a couple of hours between school & the end of the working day, its not a high quality activity club.

Yes YABU. He’ll watch cartoons when he’s at actual school too. I do wonder the educational value of Supertato tbh. But I guess downtime is important and every adult is meant to have breaks at work so what’s the difference. And there’s value in fun too.
Afterschool club was never meant to be educational as far as I know!
But we’re a very pro-chill household.

What's wrong with little kids unwinding with cartoons on a Friday afternoon?

I’d be interested to look at some research showing cartoons being especially detrimental to brain development. Do you have a citation?

So no then, if you want to integrate your children and have them play with others rather than being at home with a limited experience of different rules/people etc then have to compromise on screen time. Despite there being mounting evidence that its bloody horrendous for developing brains.

As I said I don't complain irl, I can see I'm in the minority. But my opinion is it's totally batshit. But then humans are also burning the literal lungs of the earth so really my expectations should already be rock bottom.

DD at private school, they watch disney movies at wrap care, the academic day and after school clubs are over, fine by me.

I found them all sat on a mat watching disney cartoons

all other children were out in the school's beautiful gardens.

They were all sitting on a mat watching songs, but they were also all out in the gardens? What do you mean?

Watching songs on the telly after school on a Friday is exactly what my kids did when they were small. It’s what they wanted to do.

Oh good grief

Stop pushing these kids and let them relax. My kids have exceptional standardised scores (top 1% or above) and they do plenty of activities. I would consider myself to be incredibly pushy.

Let them watch TV FFS

@Nafotdbs I agree, it's a real shame. It was the same when I worked in nurseries too. I worked with kids for 10 years but changed careers a couple of years ago as I just got so fed up with the long hours, shit pay, shit holidays, shit benefits, no recognition or thanks and being spoken to like shit by some parents. The kids were the only good thing about the job but I realised I couldn't carry on just for them. And people wonder why they can't get the staff anymore!!

I work in an office now, 9-5, mostly stress free, better money, more holidays etc

It's after school it's not education. Play, chill and sometimes on a Friday cartoons.

My kids after school club had an Xbox. 😳

I do agree with you that staff should be paid to tidy up, do paperwork etc once the children have gone.

It might put the fees up a bit but it gives the children a false sense that their parents are late if the tidying up is going on. My ds gets very anxious about still being there once the tidying starts- but it starts a really long time before the end of the session!

Yes, you pay a nanny to provide 1:1 care and ask them to stick to your "no screens" rules or you look after your kids yourself and impose those rules yourself.

If the after school club are lying and it's hours and hours, that's one thing but if it really is just a short time on a Friday afternoon I think it's a massive overreaction to be angry about this. If OP doesn't like it, they can pay a 1:1 after school nanny to look after their child instead who will stick to their rules about screentime.

I imagine being able to watch cartoons and switch off for a bit makes it feel more homey for the kids. They’re probably tired and need a bit of a rest.

Honestly think you'd be hard pushed to find one. My kids went to a forest school preschool. Sold itself that they were outside in (almost) all weathers doing nature based activities and creating resilient kids. They still had screen time periodically ! Days when it had been truly dismal weather and both the staff and kids were cold and knackered, really do understand them taking the option of tucking everyone up with cbeebies. However, my point is if a 'we spend all our time in the woods!' setting turn the TV on now and again is there anywhere left that doesn't?!

This is really a bad example of a broken system :( shouldn't be expecting anyone to work for free, but should be enough in the budget that the kids are the focus whilst they're there and then staff have paid time to do all that stuff once they've gone!! Really sucks it's turned so far that way :( so much pressure on people who just wanted to do something pretty wonderful in choosing a career with young people!!

YABU for above reasons
If you don't like it, move them to another setting.

I worked in childcare including after school clubs for years and this was normal.

We had activities, played outside etc, made the kids some tea and then played for an hour before putting the telly on so the kids could unwind and chill out before being picked up.

We'd then tidy away the toys, do the dishes, clean the kitchen, hoover and mop up and complete any paperwork. A lot of child care professionals don't get paid past 6 so they have to do all of this whilst the kids are still there (most of them work very long hours for min wage anyway so it hardly seems fair to expect them to work even more but for free)

It's not really the same thing because a) children's brains are still developing and b) cartoons have been shown to be especially detrimental for brain development.

YABU, they are being stimulated all day and need the option to chill out and switch off at the end of a day, and definitely on a Friday.

If it’s 20 minutes at the end of a Friday session at an after school club I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

If it’s an hour every weekday, that’s unacceptable.

A quiet down and unwind at the end of the first full time week in school is probably a good idea. It takes a while to get stamina back after the summer.

It sounds ok to me. It’s end of a busy week, they are likely tired and its ok for the. to have some downtime.
What were they doing on the other days when you picked him up?

I agree with you OP. My child is in year 1 and regularly has screen time as part of his school day (numberblocks etc)...so tis not just limited to after school club. Weve also stopped using things like the IKEA creche as they also seem to be more 'heres a film' these days rather than just letting the kids play.

I appreciate they're knackered, I appreciate it's an easy way to get them to chill, I can see that it's a winning option with multiple people. Still don't know quite when the easy option became the universally accepted one. I don't necessarily think that these clubs need to be pushing structured activities, crafts etc. Noone needs to be constantly learning or doing things which are creating skillsets etc but feels ridiculous to hear all this research about how little free play time children have Vs hours of screen time and then hear they are being stuck in front of a screen at a time where they could be engaging in free play with peers of multiple ages.

There's also increasing research about how overstimulating a lot of TV aimed at kids can be these days. So may not even be the chill flex people think it is. Www.raisewildflowers.com/tv-detox-faq#:~:text=Cocomelon%2C%20along%20with%20many%20other,as%20a%20drug%2C%20a%20stimulant.

Presumably the staff are being paid to stick the kids in front of the Tv. That's seriously lazy and it's bad for their brains.

An awful lot of children not in childcare will go home on a Friday night and have a bit of TV time.

And an awful lot won't.

Do the adults in your house watch TV after work or in the evening to relax?