My baby has fallen victim to North Korean propaganda!

[sunnyinthevalley]

I left my 17 month old baby at my mother's home when I went to a afternoon party with DH, and left DD17mo with my tablet, opened on the youtube app.

I come home, and some strange music is playing, and DD is clapping along happily and swaying a bit, and my mother is smiling, swaying along + cooking a casserole.

I peer at what's playing on the tablet, and it's this:

My current guess is that it appeared as a recommended video and DD tapped it (she's good with these things - even laptops!)

DM was singing 'key shown oon' along (she's not really in touch with current affairs/news, had no idea this was a dictator, and thought it was some sort of ad DD had looped.)

Then I was scrolling the BBC on my laptop, with DD beside me, and she sees Kim, and starts smiling and giggling.

I'm not sure if I should be irritated or amused

I don’t know why some people have to be so nasty about it. Lots of screen time isn’t great for kids (particularly small ones) and there are some risks with access to you tube that are worth considering. Some people have just mentioned that, which is fully reasonable but others are being super judgemental. It’s not optimal but lots of other things are also not optimal and we probably all do some of them. A very occasional parent might not but it must be rare. As some example I let mine forward face in car seats as soon as possible on the basis they got car sick even though I know it’s optimal they stay rear facing. They went to nursery 3/4 days a week 7:30-5:30 so we could both remain in our jobs and build our careers from about 7 months even though it’s optimal for really small children to be with a primary caregiver. They had some solids before 6 months and when they occasionally had a bottle it was formula because I couldn’t be chewed on to express milk. Honestly before you post and say the OP is a bad parent have a think what you do and if it’s really all in line with what’s optimal. If you also do some less that optimal things because it worked better for you then just be nice about it. In case anyone would rather the kids didn’t watch tablets things that worked well for us as alternatives were a few Duplo blocks or Happyland people or something like a wooden spoon they could bang or just shoving in a wrap and having a cuddle while doing jobs when they were tiny. As they got a bit bigger colouring/jigsaws/lego were all good as was letting them join in and help with whatever I was doing. When I cooked I also often had them at the table with some dough if I didn’t want them helping & we would bake their interesting shaped bread/biscuits. Out and about if travelling or waiting in restaurants cards/games worked well. Some of them likely do require more attention from you at the beginning but mine could easily be occupied for half an hour with a jigsaw before they were 3.

seriously? There’s a lot of damaging stuff on you tube and your baby could just have tapped her way to it without thinking

DS12 (to be clear, that’s years) has you tube blocked on his device.

I work in internet safety. YouTube is a cesspool of peadophiles and inappropriate content.
I would never let any of my children have free range on there.

There really is no sense in comments like these. Humans have always used humour to laugh at the dark side of life, the trick is to laugh at those doing the bad stuff, not the victims. Which is exactly what OP does in her post.

The humor comes from both the baby and her mother being innocently unaware of the darkness and evil behind what they are watching. Therefore the joke both highlights and tacitly condemns the evil of North Korea and it’s propaganda machine.

I

Under 2 it's really not appropriate to put them in front of YouTube or the tv, kids need interaction to form speech etc. it's one of the reasons that children are speaking later and less clearly (at a population level varies individually of course) according to my speech researcher friend. For literally 5 mins while you chop veg ok but this implies hours

Best holier than thou comment ever !!

Nice try
But this attempt at justification didn't work
Yes, people use 'dark humour' in stressful situations. I am sure the people of N Korea areceternally grateful that a MNetter is finding it hilarious that they don't 'know the evil' they are living under

You sound like great fun.

Your baby shouldn’t be using a tablet. Your baby definitely shouldn’t be on YouTube. You and your mum are shit at childcare. The situation in North Korea isn’t funny. Think that covers everything.

OP as a fellow Scot your main error here has been to believe that the middle class middle Englanders that make up 90% of mumsnet have any sense of humour. They don’t, they’re fundamentally boring and love nothing more than to preach their superiority.

If this is your response to that post you clearly haven’t understood it. The people of N Korea are not the ones being laughed at, or lampooned on YT, the lunacy of their leader is. Same thing applied during the Second World War - Hitler and his henchmen continuously ridiculed and lampooned. Absolutely didn’t mean that the victims of Nazi atrocities were being disrespected. Quite the opposite.

What was your mum doing whilst your 17 month old was on the internet?

Yep. Absolutely.

Sorry to break it to you but it’s possible to be Scottish and working class and understand that parking a baby in front of a tablet isnt great parenting.

Watching a bit of telly is fine for the baby! Ignore them

Baby was in the kitchen with DM, who was cooking and singing along with the baby, so clearly aware of what the baby was watching. Most posters seem to think this isn’t enough supervision, but if the baby had clicked on Chainsaw Massacre, l doubt DM would have just stood there and watched. I think this thread is one of the best worst examples of MN sucking the joy out of everything. I’ve not seen such judgmental attitudes in a while. And for MN that’s saying something.

Sure but if you weren’t behind your little phone screen (the irony) and someone told you this story, would you, in a Scottish working class community, be bitching on to someone about how they’re a shit parent?

Of course you wouldn’t.

Oh how I wish I’d said that !!

APA says no screens before three and then from three till six ‘commented viewing’ so you are supposed to sit with them and go ‘ ooooh wasn’t that funny?’ ‘ I liked her blue top’

my life is too short for that so we have no screen time unless someone else is nice enough to keep up with the inane prattle .

Your poor DS

As she gets older, yes it will be. As you have seen, there's propaganda and lots more inappropriate stuff on YouTube if left to watch without proper parental controls and supervision.

This is hilarious and terrifying OP

I’m not on my phone screen! And also I’m quite aware of my addictions…why on earth would I be setting my baby up for an addiction from so early on? I have teenagers and that’s bad enough but at least they weren’t exposed from so early on when studies are quite clearly showing harmful impacts on kids attention span. Being working class doesn’t mean that you’re uneducated you know or that we are only able to have certain opinions.

So making an independent decision outside of that advice is out of the question then ?

If you post on AIBU, you get answers - whether you like them or not.

Don't post here if all you want to do is justify yourself but not listen to anyone else