To ban mobiles around my baby

[Fridakahlofan]

Yesterday I asked my husband to watch our 4 month old for an hour and came in to find her mesmerised watching a youtube video of some fish he had propped in front of her. I felt annoyed - like she had been tainted but agree it totally shut her up and gave him some peace.

I'm no angel and use my phone around her occasionally but I am wondering if I should change my ways.

Does anyone out there manage to have a mobile phone they barely use? Tips please! and how can I convince my husband to cut down usage too.

Me too. Screens are utterly addictive. That’s why we are all in mumsnet!

I think it’s wrong to generalise about screen time - not all screen-based entertainment is “fast moving images and flashing lights” . There are a lot of very calming, monochrome segments on You Tube designed spwcifically for babies. Sounds like OP’s husband was showing the baby some swimming fish. I bet she’d have had no problem whatsoever (or been positively pleased) if he’d sat her in front of a fish tank. The screen was just a convenient way of conjuring up a fish tank. Sometimes it’s just slow images with music- would you also object to playing music to a baby?

My 2 year old has always watched a lot of nursery rhymes on TV. He does all the actions and they have helped his speech and counting immensely. We have a book and he finds the same rhyme in the book to show me when it comes on TV. The presenters can sing them much better than I can (although I do of course have a go). We also find that a lot of the educational CBeebies programmes really engage him- Numberblocks, Yakka Dee, Kit &Pup etc. Peppa is OK in small doses - the plots are quite sweet- and he likes to play along with his Peppa figures while watching. What I would not do is stick him in front of Paw Patrol or anything else too fast-moving and old for him.

I was in a hotel recently and a child about eighteen months old was getting a bit whingy about being put in a high chair. His mother took out her tablet, downloaded a film of what looked like cartoon characters and a tractor, and put it in front of him. His eyes got a glazed look and he stared at it mesmerised for ages and you could actually see him completely disengaging from everything around him.

It was quite disturbing to watch.

Yes but the lights from a screen aren’t akin to a fish tank, add they?! Blue light anyone?

I know, let’s stop living and looking at things and just do it on screens as it’s all the same.

I don’t think that fish tanks are known for beaming out natural light! There was a whole thread on here recently where a woman was complaining that her husband’s tank lighting was giving her headaches.

Really, there’s no need to be hysterical and equate a bit of screen time to living life only through a screen. It’s all about balance.

It depends how long it was for. There is a video on YouTube of some black dots on a white background called make baby stop crying for 10 minutes. If my baby is hysterical and nothing is working I will put it on as it's a little miracle and he stops almost instantly! It then calms him enough for something else to work after a few minutes. Dc1 also loved that video and even at 2 it can stop a tantrum in its tracks.

I don't consider it any worse than television which most people do watch daily. We don't have a licence so only occasionally stream from YouTube on the television. DH watches some things but I don't, DC sometimes watch cocomelon on YouTube, mainly if dc1 needs calming and won't agree to a story.

Yeah until we discover in 20 years that the blue light has fucked our circadian rhythms and this behind insomnia/anxiety issues in kids.

Your baby doesn’t need a screen. Your toddler doesn’t need a screen.

I'm going to assume you're an older parent as you are so against technology? That might be an unfair assumption but let's be honest, technology won't kill you and it's quite an old school way of thinking to think your child will be 'tainted'. Then again I'm 25 so what do I know, I grew up with technology . It's healthy of course to spend time stimulating him or her with actual toys and not just throw a screen at them, yes. A lot of parents do use technology to keep a child entertained while they need to get stuff done and I have seen a lot of people have the view point such as 'why leave a screen to be a babysitter?' It's a good point I'm not saying it's not but let's be real here, technology is just as big as books or toys now in this day and age. By the time your child is in their teens, there will be more technology in schools and more advancement in the technology field (hopefully). Now it's very helpful to be computer savvy for the majority of jobs so imagine what it will be like in 15 years. I'm not saying throw YouTube at them at 1 day old but eventually your kid will be watching tv, I watched the lion king as a kid...didn't kill me. So what's the difference between that and watching something on YouTube? The only thing you should watch out for is balance, make sure your kid doesn't rely on that outlet for entertainment and they have a mixture of things to keep them busy and they're brain active. A little tv, a bit of kids friendly YouTube video's and then toys and days to the park. Can be a good balance

The difference with a fish tank is that dad isn’t going to pick the fish tank up and plonk it in front of the child in the car, in a restaurant, on the bus and any other time their child may have to get over a bit of fractiousness. And a baby is likely to get bored looking at at fish tank before they get bored of the millions of videos available on YouTube.
The mobile and addictive nature of screens is what leads to their overuse.

On the off chance that a baby did become obsessed with staring into the fluorescent light of a fish tank I doubt that would be great either tbh but it’s not such a common problem.

Also I don’t think our can compare it to our generation watching tv as a child. Then you had a couple of hours of kids tv at teatime and on a weekend morning. Most children would be playing outside for some if not all of that time whereas now kids are barely allowed out alone before high school age and have kids channels, Netflix, kids YouTube etc available 24hrs a day as well as iPads and a variety of consoles.
It didn’t need monitoring so much when I was young as there was often nothing I was interested in on tv and there was only so many times I was going to watch the small selection of videos and dvds we had.

But the OP didn’t suggest that her husband was going to plonk the baby in front of an endless stream of millions of videos. He let it watch one video of some fish. Why assume he’d go crazy instead of maybe just occasionally allowing the baby to watch something like the fish for a short time?

I think it's fuss over nothing. There are bigger issues than this in life. She enjoyed it. It wasn't all day. It's nothing illegal. You need to lighten up and relax. Do you have anxiety issues? Just try to enjoy your time and try new things with her. Sometimes things should just be fun.

Do you think parents start off plonking their babies in front of hours of screen time a day? It starts with one video then it becomes a handy little thing to have to placate them any time they’re fussing and you’ve got stuff you could be getting on with. Then before long your toddler has worked out if they scream loud enough they will be given as much screen time as they like to keep them quiet.

Two out of three of my dc could become mesmerised in front of a fish tank. That's a genuine one not a screen one.

You need to lighten up and relax. Do you have anxiety issues?

Yanbu they learn very quickly to want a screen. Easier to avoid it

Although I have used one on a hideous car journey to an airport when it felt dangerous to have such crying. But other than that no screen time for a baby. At 4 months there’s no need.

Plus annoying if he’s just using it instead of interacting etc

@ImpendingDisaster Mine are a bit older than yours - but yes, colouring in was a big thing to keep them busy at Pizza Express. That and Top Trumps, Old Maid, favourite books (when they were toddlers and just wanted to hear the same thing over and over again), hangman, noughts and crosses etc. All of which, of course, involved parental involvement (shock, horror). Now it's old-fashioned hand-written Consequences when we have to wait around anywhere... They are all screen addicts now (though, that said, the 17 yo has weaned himself off after a period of addiction, and is now reading again). However, I still say no screens at the table or when socialising with grandparents etc.

Bumsexatthebingo
Do you think parents start off plonking their babies in front of hours of screen time a day? It starts with one video then it becomes a handy little thing to have to placate them any time they’re fussing and you’ve got stuff you could be getting on with. Then before long your toddler has worked out if they scream loud enough they will be given as much screen time as they like to keep them quiet.

Or alternatively you parent thoughtfully and responsibly and include screen time in a balanced way as part of a range of activities? What you describe above is the fault of bad parents, not screens.

This is speculative but I'm trying to think of ways that an actual fish tank is different from a video and I reckon a) depth perception b) the awareness of water c) realisation that the fish live in a container that holds water and as such developing the idea of 'things containing things' d) a sense of permanence ie. 'these are animals that are different from me but live in my house' . Obviously a 4 month old isn't going to have those thoughts per se but as far as development goes and as a baby gets older I'd say an actual fish tank has a lot more learning opportunities than a screen with fish on.

I think 'what's the difference?' is a good question though, I'm sure there are times when a screen is a useful tool though I wouldn't say this is a good example of a screen being put to good use - as PPs have said it was only an hour of entertaining a very young baby.

It’s not necessarily bad parenting. It can just be ignorance. This thread has shown a lot of parents see a screen as no different to a book. And if you start off using screens for peace and quiet it easily escalates.

Or alternatively you parent thoughtfully and responsibly and include screen time in a balanced way as part of a range of activities? What you describe above is the fault of bad parents, not screens

If you parent thoughtfully and responsibly, you wouldn't be giving a 4 mo baby a screen. Giving a 4 mo baby a screen is bad parenting, in spades.

Surely it's the parents using the screens for peace and quiet that are the ones causing issues? Including it as a balanced part of life is fine.

As I said earlier I don't have an issue using the bouncing dots video to stop the hysterical screaming that sometimes occurs with DC2, or letting 2 year old DC1 watch children's songs. They also have a bookcase stuffed with books and piles of books next to them, sensory toys, cars, dolls, pens, chalks, stickers, etc.

DC1 spends a lot of time playing with his cars and pulling trolleys around and demands I read to him for hours (which is why we have so many books, I can't stand more than 5/6 repetitions of one at a time) and he also has some time every few days to watch YouTube. Even when we put it on he will only sit still for so long and will get up and go and play when he's had enough, he's certainly not becoming addicted to it and has never asked for it.

We also don't let him watch anything during a meal in or out of the house unless he is ill and needs to be distracted to eat (rare). At restaurants he sits beautifully and plays with us or does colouring.

Portillista that is just your opinion. I, and others, disagree.