To think this really isn't normal?

[Rosie129]

My friend admitted today that her DD (5) hasn't done anything all summer holidays. Just stayed inside on her tablet. Apparently her DD hasn't wanted to go anywhere. They said if they do 'can they bring the tablet?' She said she's been staying up till 1-2am every night just on the tablet and not sleeping. She lets her watch the tablet whilst having her dinner. My friend said she won't eat anything if she's not watching something during it. I have witnessed it and she doesn't respond to anyone whilst on the tablet, she's just completely fixated on the screen and ignores everyone

Is DD neurodivergent?

Why is this always trotted out?

Even if the child is ND surely as a five year old the mother shouldn't be such a wet blanket as to allow her to stay up till she drops of exhaustion on the goddamn tablet?

Is your friend incredibly stupid or just lazy?

No it's not normal. Is your friend depressed? I mean it's fairly easy to amuse a 5 year old without screens it's when they get older that it can become harder especially teenage years.

I don't ask if she's depressed as an excuse it's just what is she doing while the kid is on the tablet and you say she doesn't work so I assume bedrotting? She might need some help. Maybe try and speak to her in a non judgemental way if you can being too harsh might push her further away.

Not normal and obvs not healthy for a kid I only knew of one case similar to this when I worked at a school and this 8 year old child was off the rails up all night and sleeping all day at school screaming and attacking any staff member or child who woke her up.

No, not normal at all. It's quite sad to think a 5 year old is basically addicted to screens and isn't playing with toys/even eating a meal without it.

My son is 10 and does like his games on his screens. However, we absolutely do not have them at meal times and he does lots of other things too.

We are away on holiday at the moment and we are out and about all day - he never asks for his screen.
At home, we had a friend round to play, he went to the friend on another day, seeing family, local walks- nothing particularly extravagant but we do something every day.

Her daughter will likely really struggle in September when school restarts! If I were your friend, I would be starting to think about implementing some sort or routine and reducing screen time ready for school.

But giving them the tablet/phone/tv is child abuse? Well after having specific training and parenting classes, by choice, because i have two very ND children, a godson and also worked as an HLTA. I find your advice to be quite damaging to the relationship between parent and child at the cery least and certainly will cause lasting damage to the child that they will have to overcome as they grow into adulthood. Btw my two are 18 & 19 now and both are living independently and still attending college full time with part time jobs. My DD actually started her own business at age 13 after having taught herself to sew during a hyperfocus and began to sell the paws and feet/tails etc that she made taking commisions of over £1000 at times. The average set of paws costing more than £100. Children need to be nurtured and encouraged, supported, to be the best version of themselves that they can be. You do not get to decide what that is. They do. If they need to stay up all night and be home schooled so that they can learn in a more supported environment then do it. Go to college and get qualified and get the experience to be anle to give your child that support. Thats what i did. Is that for everyone? No. Does it make you a lazy, bad parent if you don't do it? No! Screens are the least of the concerns i have read in these responses. Shameful

And your qualifications are what? Exactly? #justasking you know for clarification purposes. Every child is different and should ve treated as such. Some need to stay up all night watching tv or playing games because their circadian rhythm is upside down and inside out. Stop trying to label people as bad or lazy parents when the situation has been described by a woman who i understand, has no children, let alone children with AuADHD and no qualifications or training in these things. The op wants everyone to jump on her bandwagon so that she feels justified in labelling this mother as a bad mum. Well i think most og the responses here show what kind of narrowminded and unsupportive world our poor children are growing up in and its no wonder that the majority of children with SEND are suspended, home schooled or even permanently excluded before reaching secondary school or college. I was advised very clearly by specialists of varying specialties, that leaving the tv on for dd over night and 24/7 was absolutely the right thing to do. It managed her anxiety and helped to stop her mind from wandering while she was working. Just because something seems counterintuitive to you, does not make it wrong. Im astounded by the responses im reading here. J

Social services have significantly bigger fish to fry and would not have any input with a child who has too much screen time.

Clearly we are not talking about the same things. If my son was using screens for educational/vocational purposes I would obviously leave him to it. As I said he ONLY uses it to play a highly addictive video game and if I do not limit him he would do nothing else; no social interactions, no learning, no physical activity, nothing. So we are not talking about the same thing.

And at 5 years old a child needs to physically explore and have social interactions, not be reduced to immobility. At 5 it's easy to control their leisures. A teenager you need to negotiate with and let them have more agency regarding choice of activities to a certain extent.

The thing is though, at least from what we can gather here, the parents of this 5 year old are not acting on advice from specialist professionals. They have not done parenting courses. There is not even a confirmation of any Sen.

From what op has posted (which are apparently true accounts of what the parents have told her) this is a 5 year old with unlimited, unsupervised access to a tablet at the expense of quite literally any other activity and is done, seemingly, to keep her out of their way and keep her quiet. Not to regulate, to educate, not to fulfil a particular hyper focus interest.

So yes I see what you're saying, all children are different and some families have what seems like unusual set ups, but it is what works for them and that is ok. But that really doesn't seem to be the case here, unless op/the parents she was talking to, have omitted some fairly big bits of information.

i think you're correct in what youve said here. We quite clearly are not talking about the same things. I am talking about a ND child. You cant ‘negotiate’ with an ND child. Hey just do not care about the same things that a NT child or adult does. Their object permanence, executive dysfunction, ODD and a whole host of other issues, make negotiation a tool that isnt available to parents of ND children. We have to learn other ways of parenting and that, despite what this thread would have you believeing, is by listening to your child and what THEY need. Not by telling them that society expects them to behave this way so by god thats how I’ll make you behave/act. Not caring if your child is damaged in the process as long as they fit the mould that society has provided for you. It’s genuinely shocked me to read this and I'm even more convinced now, that my children are the lucky ones. They've grown up in a supportive and encouraging environment. Where i saw them each as individuals with personal autonomy and they were taught to make decisions for themselves (with support and always informed decisions) and the consequences were theirs to accept. If they decided to stay up all night, they had to accept the consequences of being exceptionally tired in school. If they ate snacks when they got home and couldn't eat their dinner, then they still had to sit with us for the meal and the next day snacks wouldn't be readily available. This meant they learned to make better choices. They learned to regulate their impulses and emotions through their own experiences and decisions rather than having it forced upon them by parents who would be shouting ‘because i said so’. I have never said this to either of my children, my ND godson (or any of my other 8 godchildren) or any of the children that i worked with in schools over the years, because it makes no sense. Yes i am also AuADHD. As is my mother. So i grew up very differently from most people i knew and that was the basis of my parenting philosophy. They are people in their own right. They have their own opinions and feelings and they are entitled to question everything around them and every decision that someone tries to make for them. That is right, this is how you stop tantrums and addiction to anything. Accepting each child for who they are. Seeing THEM and not what society tells you they should be. I mean, damn, don't you all just want happiness for your children? Education, qualifications, careers, marriage, children? Its all irrelevant. Our expectations of what and who our children are/should be need to change, before we have generations of kids who cut their parents out of their lives because of the toxicity and narcissistic abuse they've had to endure during their childhoods. Shocking level of judgement going on in this thread. No one Is perfect and no parent gets it right. The best you can hope for is that you don’t damage them beyond all repair and based on what i am reading here, screen ‘addiction’ is the least of the damage being done to children out there right now.

Here here! For me it was normal for one ND child and not normal for my other ND child. It was normal for one of my 9 god children, he was ND too and it was not normal for the other 8 who were all NT. its the child who decides if this is normal or not and their needs that define how we should be parenting, or at least thats how I've always done it. Based on what each of my children needed. Just for clarification, the reason i mention my godchildren is because they are now 24, 22, 20, 19, 18, 17 & 16 and my own children are 19 & 18 and i had a kinship fostering arrangement in place for 8 years on and off, whilst my best friend recovered from a stroke. The children were always together and basically grew up as siblings, because even when they were living at home, we would co-parent them to keep consistency for them. My other two spent a lot of time with us too. But i didn't ‘bring them up’ the same way as i did for my ‘9’ children. It is the child and their needs that should dictate the parenting style.

And i just cant see how its any of your business or why you would think you had a right to pass this judgement yourself, let alone bringing it to a public forum just to get approval for your way of thinking. What sort of friend does this? An old one that i never speak to again and who is no longer in our lives, if i ever got to hear of this awful, awful thing she'd done and said about me, my parenting and my family. Shameful. I feel sorry for her because with friends like you, no wonder she doesn't feel supported. You have made it quite clear in your posts, she isn't supported. Forget parenting classes or social services. This poor lady just needs better friends.

This is it, when she said about the tablet I thought she meant playing educational games/videos but it’s not, she watches Roblox etc

To anyone that has said I’ve only posted to get people to say she’s a bad mum, that’s not the case. It’s just she talks about this so openly and nonchalantly. I don’t think she actually realises that it’s not good for DD

Not only is it not normal, it's damaging. Poor child.

What are they doing on the tablet? I learned to read before I was 5, and was rarely without a book thereafter. If that wasn't 'normal', it was in a good way!

Just Roblox and YouTube

Of course its shit, they would all stay on their devices 24/7 if we let them. Thats super lazy parenting

This is neglect
yoir ‘friend’ needs to get a grip and start parenting her 5 yr old

I’m not sure about that. My children 4 and 6 would happily spend most of their time on a tablet if I let them. But I don’t. That’s the difference.

On a separate note aside from parenting, there has been a big increase in 'self generated' online child sexual abuse material in 3-6 year olds according to the IWF.

It's frightening how much access to devices some children have.

Absolutely crap,parenting.

Who let's a 5 year old stays up until 1.00/2.00 am on a tablet, it's not bad parenting it's totally neglectful. I would careless if she throws a tantrum she certainly would not get her own way, school is already suffering, your friend needs to sort it out.

Are you sure she's not just putting that tablet on when you come over to occupy her DD while you two chat?

If it's all the time then no it's not normal at all and not very good parenting.

It's not 'normal' no. But we don't know the reasons why there is such a reliance on the tablet. Is the mum depressed/anxious/overwhelmed so she can't do much with the child or is the child neurodivergent? There are a lot of reasons why this might be the only way to keep the peace but it isn't very healthy. The bit that would concern me most is her staying up until the early hours watching a tablet. There is surely no excuse for that.

I've been through periods with my two where they've had far more screen time than I'd like so I'd not judge anyone. Mine have surprised me this year though and barely been on any screens and been playing out in the park, football, on bikes, even in the rain sometimes.

Just wondering reading this - what age is it normal for a child to even have a tablet? No judgement just generally wondering as the parent of a toddler