To think that toddlers don’t need screens when they’re out and about?

[anotherscroller]

From the other “things you find rude and others don’t” thread, but it’s quite a big one so I thought it could have its own thread.

Here goes:
People who give their toddlers (let’s say 18 months to age 4) tablets/phones to watch tv on in public during incredibly short interludes of time.
e.g. A train journey of less than an hour, a bus ride, while they’re ordering coffee at a café, at the bus stop. While they’re in their buggy being driven back from nursery! That one blows my mind.
If it’s a long haul flight I do it myself, but I think such young children don’t need a screen entertaining them the whole time. AIBU? They are interested in trees, ants, the contents of your bag, playing beekaboo with your sun hat, everything. Watching the world go by.
EXCEPTION: Unless they have, or their caregivers has, a health condition that requires it, makes life easier, make life worth living..

Why do I find it rude?
In the same why I find anything where people are shutting themselves off from other people in public and not being aware of others. Even with headphones on. With toddlers, as an adult with my own toddler, I feel like they and people around them are being deprived of the opportunity to “be present” together. My toddler always wants to be curious about a child on the next table, show them her teddy, or something, and nine times out of ten they can’t because said child is completely lobotomised in front of an iPad.
i think part of being a parent is creatively keeping small children occupied during a waiting time.
i think part of being a child is learning how to be ok with boredom or waiting time, and not constantly having flashy tv to watch.
AIBU?

I think it's sad when your on a bus and the child wants to talk to parent but they are sat staring at the phone.

Confining toddlers to a 2D world is damaging.

Thats total bollocks though. There's nothing about staring at a tablet that can't be picked up after the toddler years. I'm not against screens, but let's not make up rubbish to justify them.

When I was pregnant I went to the doctor. I was watching a woman with her child. The child must have said mummy 15 times. In the end the woman said yes (she wan't on a phone, just ignoring her). The child said "I love you". I was heart broken - that poor child, desperate for her mum's attention just to tell her she loved her and the mum couldn't even be bothered to answer. What a terrilbe and cruel parent.

I now have childen who say mummy about 50 zillion times a day. I have a different view on that situation now.

We cannot always be everything all the time for our kids. Screens or not. The scenario you have described will undaoubtedly have happened to me - I might be checking work emails asI am meant to be working but need to take my kids somewhere. I might be replying to a text about a play date. I might be looking up our connecting train, or that I remembered to download the musuem tickets or whatever.

Yep, we shouldn't ignore our kids, yes screen use is an issue for society. But a snapshot means nothing at all. And presceens parents definitely didn't respond to their kids every single moment of every single day. I remember beign really bored while my parents read and book or a news paper for example.

Before screens, we played i spy books, i spy games, cards with older children, nursery rhymes, talking to them all the time, playing music in the car and signing along, just lots of interaction. On trains, lots of let's get up and take a walk and look at other carriages.
Using screens is way easier. Much much easier. No one is against screens totally. The problem is young children need a lot of adult interaction to develop. They also need to learn to focus and concentrate. Screens destroy concentration. And not enough adult interaction affects children's development.

This.

I have done this before with my youngest DC and I’m really not bothered about anyone’s judgement. I had to take DD to an optometrist appointment a couple of months ago and it lasted an hour. He couldn’t sit in his buggy because it’s upstairs with no lift access so I had to sit him on my knee, for an hour. The optometrist understandably needed the room to be quiet too so I placated almost 2 year old DS with YouTube kids. Not really sure how else I could have kept him on my knee quietly for an hour really.

I was thinking more along the lines of small children and toddlers. DS is 3 and has never asked. He has never been given my phone and we don’t own tablets. He doesn’t know it’s an option. I don’t doubt for a second that he’ll get to the stage where he wants a tablet or a games console or whatnot, but I meant… for parents of 3YO who have been allowed screens from time to time, do they accept “no”?

(Not a perfect parent btw, we have CBeebies on a lot! I just personally don’t like screens when we are out and about.)

@TheGreatBobinsky so what social cues do you feel that a 3 year old approaching another 3 year old would have missed? That they shouldn't try and interact with anyone that is disengaged from their surroundings? Will be a very sad world if no-one tries to spark up a conversation with a stranger because they are looking at a phone. If that 3 year old looked up, acknowledged, then disengaged, then my child (theoretical as mine are now past that age) would hopefully pick up the cue that they do not want to play...but the point is that there has been a level of interaction. If my theoretical child then tried to persist with an interaction, as a parent I would steer them away by saying 'i don't think they want to play right now, come and play with me' and my theoretical child would learn that if after someone has acknowledged you, they then disengage, they probably don't want to play. Seriously this is basic human stuff.

It’s even worse if the child doesn’t have headphones

Same here, we are screen free with the kids. We only use our phones when we need to and have them out minimally when the kids are there, laptop is off unless we really need it and tablet is left at work.
Call me old fashioned, but we play card games with our kids for wind down time after dinner! And on long car journeys they have sticker books, and we make a family playlist to listen to. Waiting rooms? They bring a toy or book. It can be done.

We did more screen time during lockdowns for obvious reasons (having very very rarely allowed screens until 2yo, then some supervised tv daily until 4yo when the first lockdown happened) but found it made DD very demanding for more, lots more whining and lots more 'I'm bored' if she didn't have it.
We now (6yo) allow an hour's TV per day, a mixture of CBeebies and CBBC, plus some films. That is almost entirely watched with an adult too so they talk about what they're watching. She isn't allowed to watch a tablet or phone. She likes the CBeebies/CBBC website activities and is allowed 30 mins of that a week on a laptop.

So why do the people who run the big IT companies not allow their own children to have screens?!

But the comment you were responding wasn't about simply trying to strike up a conversation, it was about a child continuing to try and engage with a child who wasn't interested. My 3 year old has been followed, grabbed, tapped repeatedly, even had her head physically turned towards a child that she was not interested in talking too because they would not leave her alone after she had already made it clear that she was not interested. This is a common occurance (maybe not the head turning incident but everything else).

Simply saying hello is fine - continuing on after that if you are given no encouragement is not. As I said my child doesn't have a tablet - but even if she did those behaviours towards her would be unacceptable. Its great if that's what you would do, but a lot of parents don't do that. They ignore it and then when my child retaliates, they act as though its my child in the wrong.

Why do you see it as a awful thing to have screens out and about, but totally fine to have the TV on all the time? Curious really - in the extremes both are bad aren't they? Or is it just that other people can see you when you are out?

Haven't read the full post but came to say just stop judging. You have absolutely no idea what is going on in other peoples lives

I completely agree @anotherscroller
DD is almost 3 and has never been given a screen. She watches some TV at home but that’s it.
At mealtimes she sits and eats and talks like a normal human being. We take crayons or a small toy when there is a wait for food but never a screen. It is lazy parenting.

The thing that makes me sad is my observations of my family parties over the years. We have a big family. When I was young me and my cousins would race around together and invent games, dance, laugh, play with what we could find etc - we might be shy of each other at first but by the end of the party we were roaring with laughter together and playing - having a great time. Loud, hot, raucous and overtired by the end of it. Now I am in the next generation. I see the children at the family parties on tablets and phones, together but not engaging with each other. Sitting in the same spot the whole time. Screens create barriers. Children need to be bored and to get over initial anxiety in social situations - not just switch on a screen for distraction. And why even bring a tablet for your child to a party?!

I absolutely get that screens are helpful from time to time when you need to get things done with small kids, or long flights etc but it’s the long term effects on older kids that worries me. Kids walking to school next to each other not talking, just glued to their screens. Children lacking in social skills. Lives lived out on the internet.

If we want our children to be engaging, talkative, confident socially capable people then we need to give them all the help and practice we can when they’re young. Even though it’s hard work for the parents. Screens are becoming a way of avoiding difficult feelings.

Haha maybe!! No tbh, we started with CBeebies when he was about 18 months old when he’d started waking at 5am and it was killing me (just not a morning person!) and it stemmed from there. It seems to work in the mornings quite well (for our routine I mean). He has breakfast sat in front of it too and I always swore I’d never let him eat in front of the telly. I think fundamentally the difference (for me) is that I can sit with him of a morning and talk about what’s on the TV. Just today Ubercorn was teaching us both about some mosque made out of mud in Africa. It’s about as interactive of an experience as you can get with a TV.

But out and about… just as OP said… I like that he watches the world go by, learns to be bored, discovers things. The reason I’ve never given him my phone or a tablet at home to play with is frankly because I can’t be bothered with the tantrum if I say no at a time when I don’t want him to have it (which is what prompted my initial question…. Do these tantrums actually happen or do children understand tablets are for a specific set of circumstances only?)

So interesting reply from @RidingMyBike - thank you!

Screens are becoming a way of avoiding difficult feelings

absolutely, like all addictions.

@ReeseWitherfork ok, so a screen is ok fora 5am wkaing that's killing you. But not to distract from a 6pm danger nap. You say you do loads of other interaction, and that is just a small portion of the day. How do you know the out and about screen users aren't the same?

That's exactly the point. You don't know people's experiences or the full context of any of these examples. When you see a child in a biggy with a phone you have no idea if they have a zero tv policy at home, or have spent the other 13 of the toddler's 14 waking hours interacting and playing and showing them the wonders of the world and now are having 15 mins downtime on the journey home

Do kids have too much access to screens? Yes, probably. Are the instances mentioned, or screens speicfically for out and about, awful? No.

Obviously for neurodiverse kids the considerations will be different, but for all other kids I completely agree. Play I-Spy, guessing games, chat about what you see, bring a puzzle book or colouring, a book to read, whatever - just not a screen. It's not actually that difficult to amuse small kids if you make the effort and don't give them the option of a screen.

Of course there are lots of individual reasons why people do it and that's up to them but there has been a huge shift in norms that can't be put purely down to SEN or individuals having a hellish day.

My children are teens. When we sat waiting outside ballet lessons or whatever the parents would bring small toys, sticker books, magic painting mats etc, take them for a little walk if restless, generally chat with each other and their kids. I sat in a ballet waiting room the other week for a lesson and it was totally different. There were about 6 or 7 toddlers there. They were all handed devices and their mums were either on their own phones or occasionally chatted to each other. That was a completely different experience for all those toddlers than my kids had in the 2000s, and yes it looked like a lost opportunity for interaction.

I think it's vicious circle too. When a device is so good at keeping them quiet, it becomes socially less acceptable for them to make small amounts of noise, and also for parents to do nursery rhymes or chat with them. If we want children to be on screens less, we need to tolerate the noise they and their parents make having those interactions. It's also hard for a parent to put themselves out there and do that when everyone else's toddlers are kept quiet with their screens. Maybe you also don't want to annoy others or be judged for "performance parenting".

These are probably the parents who go to a concert and watch it all through their phones.

As an aside, I saw interesting research that indicated your brain doesn't store the memory as well if it's come through a screen. So when you do this - which many people do - you neither enjoy or store the experiene in the same way.

Eh? Did you actually read my posts? I don’t care if other kids do use screens out and about. I asked if they understood the boundaries around using the screens.