No TV before school?!

@Jade3450 it might not be "screens" that stop a meltdown but watching a specific programme.
If ten minutes of watching a quality made children's programme is part of a routine they enjoy then suddenly being told they can't (for no obvious to them reason) then they will become upset.
Yes at some point the parent will have introduced their child to that programme but so what?
Adults watch TV. Why shouldn't children? (as long as it's an appropriate programme)

Wouldnt a better way forward be helping her understand how to regulate her emotions herself and find coping mechanisms for when she feels anxious or overwhelmed?

Using a tv to do this will not help her manage in the long term.

Why?

The parent says the child has ‘a meltdown’ if she isn’t allowed to watch tv, but it’s the parent who introduced this routine. Now the child has adapted to it and has a ‘meltdown’ if it’s withdrawn.

The meltdown was avoidable.

And since when did screens help autistic children to self-regulate?

It’s so backward.

Not for the school to dictate! We found it really helpful on getting them motivated to get ready/breakfast/teeth as they could watch a favourite programme if they were ready in time.

Risk what exactly?

Which point in @BoredZelda ’s post are you saying is “cobblers”?

Or are you just casting personal slurs because you don’t have a valid rebuttal to any of the points?

See I have never allowed TV before school because I would never get them out of the door. I guess every family is different but it would 100% make my day harder. They also have to get dressed before they come downstairs for the same reason.

What cobblers, @BoredZelda . I’m sure you’re a researcher! Not.

@BoredZelda When I rule the world, a solid grounding in statistics and contextual data analysis will be compulsory education (along with assertiveness training for girls).

Making up misleading titles for research papers then declaring those titles to be a factual representation of the work will either reading comprehension lessons or detention for dishonesty.

This is the important thing with research. Correlation and Causation need to be considered. Of course if you survey children and say “do you watch TV before school in the morning” and the kids who say yes are part of a group who are less focussed, perhaps with communication issues, probably struggling in class generally. You could jump to “tv in the morning is bad for kids” or you could look at everything else in that family. Did the child have breakfast, are the family engaged in education, are they communicating well with their child generally. Unless you adjust for those factors, you can’t say TV in the morning is bad. I would put money on, the people here saying they get their kids up, have breakfast with them and help them get ready then give them half an hour in front of the TV before they leave so they themselves can get ready are not the kids who are affected.

A great example of schools putting policies in place which are not based on evidence but they carry on anyway is phones in schools. Evidence is mixed but all the research says that it only works as part of a wider initiative to reduce the amount of time kids are on phones. It isn’t even clear that it’s the screen that’s the problem, but more a lack of engagement with homework, not getting enough sleep, using their downtime for “empty brain” rather than doing something to improve cognitive skills. Unfortunately, schools think they’ve put a ban in place so job done. The “no TV in the morning” answer means the school offload their responsibilities. They target the nice middle class parents to do something, instead of finding a way to reach disengaged families to improve the overall attainment of their children. All the while the attainment gap increases.

If schools got it right all the time, we wouldn’t have the problems in them that we do.

I make my choices based on my own research, not what some external group has done to try and sell something to the Education department / school.

Have you done your research about what the risk is?

You make it sound like she’s giving them crack cocaine with their breakfast.

Letting your kids watch some cartoons before school is hardly a risky behaviour 🤣

Your response makes me sad.

What is the risk you are running then?

I’ve read through the only research link provided on this thread and there is nothing wrong with it as a piece of research but it does not demonstrate “tv is bad for your children in the morning” - quite the contrary as the authors themselves point out.

Over the years I’ve seen a lot of poorly researched “facts” become unquestioned facts as they filter through to schools, often with the aid of someone making money at the other end (such as some well known reading schemes, behaviour policy schemes, maths schemes, sex education schemes) and this has become much worse over the past 20 years as every school functions under budget, under time and with one eye over the shoulder to social media attacks.

The evidence that “tv before school” is bad for all children or even most children has not yet been posted to this thread and most of what I’ve found talks about “excessive tv overall” and in homes where parent child communication is already poor or where children have pre-existing language and learning issues.

TV before school was never my thing because (selfishly) I can’t stand it first thing in the morning. If I (selfishly) had found it useful I would have used it, since there was no evidence that it was more harmful than other activities before school.

I could of course have told them to play with their “thoughtful and beautifully hand carved model animals and cars” as recommended by MN but my plebian DC preferred plastic tat in the toy cupboard.

As per pp - if I’d told them to read I’d never have dragged them out of the door.

@BoredZelda Sit your kids in front of the telly as much as you want. It doesn’t affect me. I wouldn’t risk it myself.

Schools all believed the “Brain Training” was beneficial and invested heavily in it, until the research said it was a load of bunkum.

If I give my child a book before school, I’d never get her out of the door.

Well I can assure you she did need it. She gets very anxious about school and tv helps regulate her. I am the same. She is doing very well academically.

I'll do what works for my family and you do what works for you.

As the parent of an autistic child, you should know better than to judge others on their choices.

Why does a child watching 30 mins of TV before school make you sad? Also why does it matter that someone else’s child watching TV makes you sad?

My autistic DD needed screen time to regulate her before school. She had a set routine and had to watch 30 minutes between breakfast and leaving for school or she would have a meltdown.

As the parent of an autistic child this makes me so sad.

You do realise that at some point you introduced this to her? And no, she didn’t ’need’ it.

You know there are books for pre-readers?

They’re called ‘picture books’.

So yes, mine looked at books in their cot from under one. It’s a great habit to get children into because then (who’d have thought it) they don’t need to watch tv.

That isn’t what the results or the paper’s discussion say. (read the authors’ section on limitations as well as the results and the conclusion and the underlying data).

Never let my kids watch tv before school. There wasn’t time!

Not a lot of people will change something that works for them and that doesn’t cause any issues just because “research”.

Once upon a time cigarettes were beneficial according to “research”.