Cartoons at after school club?

[Maxmaxmax]

My little boy just started at nursery school this week. We are not new to the nursery setting and have been at a private one for 2 years, but this is the first week at the nursery of a local school. The school is highly rated from what I can tell. All parents and local teachers speak highly of it, and all has been good so far in the usual nursery day. However when I went to collect him today from after school club I found them all sat on a mat watching disney cartoons. I asked if this was usual, and was told quite defensively that it was only on a friday, and it was just a little song.

Am I being naive or old fashioned to expect more than this at an after school club? If they're interested in music then why not encourage the children to play music, or to have a dance party. Not just sit there idly watching the screen.

It is also a very sunny day, and all other children were out in the school's beautiful gardens.

AIBU, or should we be expecting a bit more?

Oh good grief

Stop pushing these kids and let them relax. My kids have exceptional standardised scores (top 1% or above) and they do plenty of activities. I would consider myself to be incredibly pushy.

Let them watch TV FFS

I found them all sat on a mat watching disney cartoons

all other children were out in the school's beautiful gardens.

They were all sitting on a mat watching songs, but they were also all out in the gardens? What do you mean?

Watching songs on the telly after school on a Friday is exactly what my kids did when they were small. It’s what they wanted to do.

DD at private school, they watch disney movies at wrap care, the academic day and after school clubs are over, fine by me.

So no then, if you want to integrate your children and have them play with others rather than being at home with a limited experience of different rules/people etc then have to compromise on screen time. Despite there being mounting evidence that its bloody horrendous for developing brains.

As I said I don't complain irl, I can see I'm in the minority. But my opinion is it's totally batshit. But then humans are also burning the literal lungs of the earth so really my expectations should already be rock bottom.

I’d be interested to look at some research showing cartoons being especially detrimental to brain development. Do you have a citation?

What's wrong with little kids unwinding with cartoons on a Friday afternoon?

Yes YABU. He’ll watch cartoons when he’s at actual school too. I do wonder the educational value of Supertato tbh. But I guess downtime is important and every adult is meant to have breaks at work so what’s the difference. And there’s value in fun too.
Afterschool club was never meant to be educational as far as I know!
But we’re a very pro-chill household.

I would be annoyed at this. There are lots of ways to provide quiet restful occupation for children without screens. A screen only rests your body, not your brain, and its childrens brains which need a rest after school.

Playing outside, simple repetitive activities like colouring, or easy card games etc are better.

ASC put tvs on because they have too many tired kids, sometimes poor facilities and equipment, and are poorly paid. Its stop gap care for a couple of hours between school & the end of the working day, its not a high quality activity club.

I don't think it's a problem for kids to watch half an hour TV at after school club. And I understand about the cleaning needing to be done.

But it's strange how nearly everyone on this thread equates TV with being the only way for children to relax. And if not watching TV they have to be doing organised activities.

Does no one let their kids just potter about doing their own thing ? It shouldn't be stressful or tiring for children to play with toys, do some self directed drawing or colouring or play outside. In fact quite the opposite.

Wasn't there a 2011 study by a pediatrian? Maybe American...

Sweden came out v recently saying there should be genuinely zero screen time for the first two years. It's growing opinion.

When I worked in after school club we had a sports hall garden art room and computer/tv room each area would be open with a staff member in each area and children could move around each area freely.

100%!!! I feel like there's a strong message that people in general, but especially young people are spending too much time in front of a screen and the message I hear more often than not is directly comparing hours of screen time (inside or outside of education) compared to hours of unstructured free time/free play. So assuming that if they're not in front of a screen they should be engaged in structured activities or being entertained for an adult seems so counter intuitive. They could be allowed to be bored, find their own way to unwind, make their own entertainment.

Then again perhaps that's also happening and then every now and again there's also half an hour or so of the box. Hard to tell on an internet forum without all the nuances and facts!

This is fine imo. Loads of kids get home from school and watch TV. It's downtime

@Catza found it....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9923845/

I worked at a posh nursery years ago and we put all the toddlers in a little room with a drink and they watched the teletubies!

I guess after school club is staffed by people on NMW with no particular qualifications required other than dbs. It's probably reflected in the price. If you're wanting your dc to be stimulated after school I guess you'd need to look for a nanny to take them to afterschool extra curricular.,

After a long, busy day, they may not want to draw, colour or play - they may just want to sit down, and putting the TV on is a way of stopping them from falling asleep.

I know when I get home from work, I often just want to flop out in front of the TV or on the sofa. I certainly don't want to do anything active or that takes up too much of my brain!

This happened to us when we moved our DS (2) from a private nursery to a preschool attached to a school back in May. The after school club was ran by the preschool staff, including his key worker, in the same room, so no change to his day to day really (the preschool also ran the after school club in the main school and send staff over there every night). I was very shocked to pick him up and see the kids watching TV. Mainly because I don’t allow screen time on an evening as his behaviour is so much worse afterwards and getting him to bed is a nightmare. I asked the staff and they said it was usual towards the end of the day when the day kids had left and the after school kids were the last left, as they want the kids occupied so they can clean down. I told them we don’t allow screen time on evenings and why - even told them about the plan/routine the Health Visitor had helped draw up (when I’d rang in desperation about his behaviour on an evening that then escalated to him being up all night screaming) and how no screens had been very clear and how much of an improvement we’d seen once we cut it out in afternoons (he still gets it on weekend mornings until his midday nap). I could see they understood but they explained that’s the way it had to be and they will use the TV. So my son started coming home every evening crying for TV because he couldn’t understand why he could have it at nursery 10 minutes prior but not when we got home. Tbf in the nicer weather and summer it did lessen because they shoved the kids outside to play while they cleaned up, but it’s starting again now. There’s not much you can do. But YANBU, I don’t agree with it happening.

No biggie.

Again, they don't need to be stimulated. They just need some of paper pencils scissors glue Lego toy cars role play stuff outdoor space, and let them crack on.

Mine feeds them jam sandwiches. Poor AF up north.

I can see why staff on minimum
wage might want the kids contained at the end of a long week, to give them opportunity to tidy up so they stand a chance of leaving and getting home on time. Starting to get cutting and sticking or musical instruments out at the end of a session just creates a lot more mess.

Blimey. The po-faced attitudes on this thread explains exactly why recruiting for childcare staff is so difficult. As well as dealing with the low pay, long hours and often stressful nature of the job they have to deal with moaning and interfering parents like this.

I work in a primary school and I don't know what's causing it but parents seem to be getting more and more demanding, and frankly arrogant in some cases, every year.

My kids are young adults now. They went to the school afterschool club. There was lots of opportunity for free play, playing out, organised outside games, but at the end of the day when staff were less available to sit down with the kids and were starting to pack up all the activities, and the kids gradually got picked up one by one they'd tend to do the simpler activities like watching TV or sitting drawing or doing homework/reading. The kids themselves chose which.

My work finish hours were varied so I used to turn up at various times and saw what went on at different times. If I'd turned up every time and all the kids were sitting watching TV with nothing else offered I would have been rightly horrified. But that just wasn't the case. I'd arrive earlier and they'd all be outside doing a group game. If there were any who really didn't want to do that they might be inside playing a group board game with a member of staff.

Do the kids seem happy and relaxed? All getting on with each other? Do they tend to like the staff, and look forward to attending? If so, great.

But honestly, chill your beans with the micromanaging of your child's education and care. Do it yourself if you have such fixed ideas of how you want it done. I'm not being facetious. I genuinely mean it. After school club obviously is not the type of care that you want.

Parent takes an interest in their childs care...

Mumsnet 'Jesus if you're going to be opinionated about your kids maybe you should homeschool!'

Seems reasonable...

At my kids school they use a lot of screen time. Phonics and maths taught from a video. Music too. And RE. Plus they have TV during wet play and at home time. Not ideal IMO but that's how it is