Toddler TV snobbery

[Notmorewashing]

I have noticed on here and in real life people (mostly middle class) are snobs about letting 1-3ish year olds watch TV.
What do you think? I allow mine at times and when I was pregnant with a child already and then two children it was impossible not to. I think it’s ok as long as you do other activities but people gasp when I admitted doing this!!

You do know that ignoring means knowing something and choosing to discount it or not pay attention to it, don't you? It isn't the same as being unaware.

When I grow up I’ll be as good a parent as you @shitholiday2018

Have a great day.

Oh dear PaulH, when people resort to those kind of comments, you know you’ve hit a nerve.

It’s funny as I was de facto raised by telly and DH comes from a tightly middle class background where telly was tightly controlled.

Ha, yes, I was raised by the telly too. To add to the horror, we watched a lot of ITV in our house. Middle-class people (who I only started meeting when I started uni) visibly blanch when I tell them that.

Despite spending my childhood watching reams of Tiswas, Knight Rider et al, I somehow managed to get a good degree and a decent career, house etc. People think I'm middle-class these days. Until I say the word 'ITV'.

So anyway, OP, YANBU. It's snobbery and it's tiresome.

@shitholiday2018

I don’t understand why it’s snobbery. If I choose to send my child to bed at 10, and yours goes at 7, that’s a difference in parenting choice/style. But not snobbery. Why when it comes to TV is it snobbery? Do you think it’s only a certain social class which makes those decisions? Do you think the decisions of a different social claas are inherently snobby insofar as they are different? Really interesting debate. It feels more like a reverse chip on the shoulder to me though.

A chip which stems from insecurity about choices, not social class. Genuinely don’t see a connection between social class and choices about TV.

shit, IME at least, there is definitely a bit of a TV divide (as I bore on about in my post above). Around a) whether you watch it or not, b) what you watch and c) how much you watch.

Again this is only IME, but there are clear relationships between class/wealth/aspiration and these 'measures' of TV-watching.

I find it interesting; for years the papers, even the 'clever' broadsheet ones, have had TV reviews in which the critics approach TV shows with the same analysis and writing in the same register as 'high' culture like theatre. And yet I still hear, and not just from people over a certain age, the old chestnut about TV being a 'drug', nothing but a time-sapper, responsible for all our ills, etc etc.

The only thing I'm snobby about wrt to kids and TV watching is it's a Definite No to commercial TV in our house (as Nikita has already commented on!)!

Cbeebies is totally where it's at, as as so many pp have pointed out kids can learn so much from it and as long as it's part of a balanced active lifestyle I really see no harm - in fact wow the opposite!

But there's No chance my DC are watching ITV, channel 5 or tiny pop (or whatever!) - the programme are vacuous crap as a general rule and I can't stand the bloody commercialism (& sexism!) the adverts encourage...

No toddler is going to be ruined by being putting in front of CBeebies while you make breakfast / have a sick day / need to settle a fussy newborn sibling. The issue is if they watch it all day everyday and miss out on the Type of things listed above for hours and hours, day after day.

I agree with this. DD is 20 months. She watches 20ish minutes of TV every evening (Peppa in DH's native language). I have a breather and sort out adults' dinner. In my starry-eyed pfb idealism I'd love for her to stick to TV in DH's language so she's exposed to it more, but I imagine that will fall by the wayside at some point. There is a really wide spectrum of acceptable behaviour with TV imo (as there is with food, sleep habits, clothes, potty training...) and most of the time what someone else does is between them and theirs, it really doesn't bear further consideration than that for me.

Darling, you might be right. I don’t think TV is the devil’s work, it’s just the fact that lots of households I know have it on constantly. To fill any kind of void. It hampers living if you’re constantly watching something else. And it’s getting worse. Someone said their little one loves watching someone on you tube playing an online game. That is just nuts. It’s screens gone absolutely mental. And people think it’s ‘normal’.

I agree there is some great Tv. I think reviews of great tv programmes can sit happily alongside reviews of theatre, music etc. But you can’t stick a theatre in a corner of a room and watch it all day. That too would be unhealthy.

I am sure that sitting with your 4 year old watching a programme, chatting about it etc is better than a plonk in front of it. But I just don’t buy that it’s as good as sitting with a book, visiting a museum, finding stuff out that way. And re the ‘sharing’ thing, you can break off easily in a book, at the end of a sentence, and say ‘so what does that mean? What do you think will happen next?’, interactively in a way you just can’t with tv, cos you’d be talking over it. For tiny little kids with big burgeoning growing brains, there is always a better option.

My DD1 didn't watch any TV at all until DS1 was born and was the most difficult non-sleeping baby. He'd settle at 6am when DD1 (then 2) would snuggle into bed and watch at least 2 hours of TV on a tablet. If she hadn't I think I would actually have died from exhaustion. They are now both seasoned TV addicts, along with the million other activities they do. Its a bit of a gap filler and let's us all have a chill out.
I'm heavily pregnant and on bank holiday me and DD snuggled up and watch 2.5 straight hours of TV, eyes glued to the screen. She was so chilled and happy the rest of the day, I think they sometimes need to switch off just like us. Life is so full on and with constant moving and changes and activities. That's what I told myself before guiltily getting the paints out anyway

I don’t think TV is the devil’s work, it’s just the fact that lots of households I know have it on constantly. To fill any kind of void. It hampers living if you’re constantly watching something else. And it’s getting worse. Someone said their little one loves watching someone on you tube playing an online game. That is just nuts

Ok we bang on agree @shitholiday2018

Soz for being arsey

Flaming - TV is clearly far better than a parental breakdown. But do you ever question why are you still using it to such a degree now? Do you need to, or is it a cop out?

Thanks PaulH - totally accepted (and lovely to receive).

shitholiday2018, in principle I agree. In our house it was on all the time and these days I hate that. I never have it on just in the background, or when people were trying to have a conversation, and I get twitchy at my family's houses because that's pretty much still how it is for, it seems, every family member except me!

But it's hard for me to come down on TOO hard because, as I said, I grew up that way and I have still turned out quite intelligent, well read, 'cultured' in the sense of being interested in art, theatre, politics etc.

It's a tough one. I don't have kids but I imagine (hope!) that if I did I'd be somewhere between the 'no TV' and 'always TV' camps – I think I'd use it as an occasional distraction or babysitter as well as watch specific things with my kids to hopefully encourage learning and discussion, as well as for cosy family time, which I think is valuable.

Am I the only one who thought this would be a thread about toddlers finally noticing that Bing is shit? "I'm not watching this rubbish, mummy, put Homes Under the Hammer on"...

We are a mostly no screen family. We watch sport and DS who plays an instrument sometimes uses it to watch performances of particular pieces. DS1 is 7 and DS2 is 2 and I genuinely don’t remember when they last watched a TV programme. (No I do, it was the day my mum died in a different country and I needed to speak to my dad and a zillion other people at 7 am). But that’s how rare it is. Why? Because we are not really a TV family. I hate background noise. It sets my teeth on edge and stops me from being productive. DH and I will watch bits of TV like the Bake Off or more recently Line of Duty (DH did, I didn’t, it’s not my thing). So both kids are just used to a life sans screen time for the most part. I didn’t do ‘research’ on this btw and it isn’t some deeply thought out choice. It’s quite literally how we live, (DH and I watched v little TV before the kids), so now that’s how the kids live too. I genuinely also couldn’t give a shiny shit about how others parent. Except I did judge the family at the library the other day letting their kids watch YouTube on the phone at full volume sans headphones. That was unnecessary. But I reckon that’s more a parenting thing than a screen thing.

Now all this might be seen as some kind of weird snobbery because DH and I are, academics and decidedly middle class. But. We are not remotely hippy parents. I am a pretty strict mum, no attachment parenting here. Breastfed both kids but I hate slings. Also the older one co-slept for a bit (because he was a clingy goat) but it’s also not my thing. Yet, I keep my kids in the same room as me for a whole year. And both are reasonable sleepers (DS2 was singing at 6 am yesterday...best to erase that from my memory).

Btw having lived in the US for a bit there are always these recommendations coming out from the American Association of Paediatricians. Always causing some kind of moral panic. It then transpired that screen time also includes FaceTime and Skype and under 2s should be banned from it. Well, see we are a no TV family but we also live 27 hours away from the now three grandparents. So there is no way we are not using FaceTime and Skype. And I refuse to feel guilty about it.

There is way too much hand wringing on this topic. Some people are snobs. About TV. Food. Clothes. Some people use the TV as babysitters. The vast majority find some middle ground and it’s best to leave it there.

Yes @neighneigh

Replace “Bing” with “Peter Rabbit” though - now we’re sucking diesel

I don’t limit TV. My children have always watched tv from a young age and they’re all normal children who enjoy the outdoors and indoors.

My ds was telling me about a boy in his class who “studies” Monday-Friday after school (7 year old ) and is only allowed TV on Saturdays. How sad is that? I understand he’s being moulded into an academic of some sorts, but really?

I think children’s tv shows can help build speech and vocabulary. Operation ouch is teaching my kids loads of medical vocab atm. I’m not complaining!

I do know of one family whose children are strictly limited with regard to 'screen time'- I believe it's 30 minutes per day

Is that strict?

I should have specified I suppose- the children are now 7 and 10, and yes in my opinion it is strict.

Shodan be careful of taking the one example you have knw of a family restriciting screen/TV time and make it a generalisation.

I didn't- I, as other pps have, gave an example from my own experience. I choose to believe that other families as mentioned on here restrict screen time and it doesn't turn their children into whining, demanding brats but in all honesty, as I don't know anyone on here personally, I can't say for definite that they're telling the truth. In much the same way as you can choose to believe, or not, that ds2 , like a couple of other posters have said about their children who haven't been limited with screen time, is extremely intelligent, started talking, naming colours/items early and at 11 has been entered in many national maths competitions. Hence drawing on my own experience.

suspect what you are describing has more to do with the controlling nature of the aprenst there than the TV/screen limit

Possibly, but in this instance we're discussing toddler TV snobbery. The family I mention has had the same rules in place since their children were toddlers. The same rules that other posters are holding up as an ideal. Is that not controlling then?

30 mins to an hour on a Saturday and Sunday for the older one only. nothing mid week. They are 2 and 4.

I’m not snobby about it I just find them better behaved, more engaging and more likely to fill their time with playing with each other than when they are not allowed television.

No tablet/phone ever unless they are on an aeroplane. I read a great article on MN about how bad and addictive the screens are and how it actually affects your child’s concentration, gratification etc etc and it made me think I don’t want that for my children.

Having said that when they see Grandma (who lives in another country ) they love her CBeebies ap and looking at her tablet. It’s a treat.

To the PP posters above who all seem to have advanced children who watch tv both of mine have also hit their milestones early despite not being taught to count by a tv programme and using old fashioned books,objects and fingers. I enjoy doing with with them.

Each to their own.

I should have specified I suppose- the children are now 7 and 10, and yes in my opinion it is strict.

Yes you should have specified because they’re hardly toddlers are they. Not sure this example is relevant to this thread at all!

I had three under three so yes they watched TV and no, they aren’t scarred in any way.

Everything in moderation, a bit of TV never harmed anyone.

There is a big difference in sitting with your toddler watching a bit of CBeebies and having the TV on in the background with trashy American cartoons. The good TV can be educational and relaxing and you can talk about it together, do activities, etc. I don't think of it as snobbery, just being choosy what you watch and for how many hours a day. Just be selective and don't watch tv instead of doing things with your child