I've just seen the most depressing thing

[Havesomecommonsense]

In a coffee shop, in comes a Dad and his daughter (roughly 3 years old)
He made a comment to the daughter about this being a weekly visit before he dropped her back to the mum
He then sat her on his lap, gave her a phone and she watched instagram videos and he watched his own phone holding it over her head..
He gave her some food, which she kept choking on intermittently. He barely said 2 words to her
Yes I'm judging, but fgs do better

OMG. Twice.

This post by the OP is going to get loads of defensive responses, but she's right. It's depressing. Parenting by phone is raising a whole generation of dopamine addicts with the attention spans of gnats, who need their phone 'fix' like a drug addict needs heroin. I can feel what it does to me, let alone an impressionable child's brain! Parenting by phone is going to be viewed in the same light as sticking a shot of brandy into a baby's bottle to help them sleep, at some point in the future.

Well, I'm guessing this snapshot may go some way to explain why he only gets 2 hrs a week with his kid 🤷‍♀️

I think things must have changed literally beyond recognition since I was a child, and hardly surprising given this would have been a good 60+ years ago.
All the same, back then my parents, like everyone else, had no expectations about date nights, time off from being parents etc. The relationship necessarily expanded to include kids, so to speak.

OP’s observations just made me recall how my dear old Pa would have handled that time, in charge of me and my little brother.
We lived in London, which at the time was still full of craters, mountains of twisted rusty metal, huge great gaps between partly wrecked buildings.
On the Overground into the city, he’d be pointing out this and that spot, telling us that this crater was once his school; that mound of girders was where a famous man had lived with his pet monkey; that there pit used to be his own father’s famous dancehall, and so on.
We’d be goggle eyed at all this thrilling history……and never thought to wonder how any of it stacked up with very similar tales he tell on holidays over in his native Ireland (for years I believed he’d been brought up in Blarney Castle as a kitchen scullion 🤣)
He must sound like a weird fantasist, but it was simply absurdist entertainment by a man with a Goons obsession, and it made the grimmer aspects of London into a place of endless fascination.
(He and Ma used to perform the Goons’ Ying Tong Song at us as a so-called lullaby. 💡Just realised this must be the cause of my lifelong insomnia!)

My hard to discern point is that while it’s true we Oldies may sometimes look askance at the deadening effect of screens used as childminders, and parents ignoring their kids, it may often be just a moment of nostalgia for our own childhoods, missing happy occasions with our own parents at a time almost lost to memory.
It’s not always just negative judgment, I hope.

Second thread in 24 hours where apparently the only two options are screen or running riot. Were all kids feral then, twenty years ago? Concentration spans are, SEN notwithstanding, what you make them. If you always instantly whip out the phone the moment child starts to fidget, no, they'll not develop the ability to sit and be amused. To the pp who said it's no different to a book, at least with a book the child has to engage imagination, comprehension skills, focus, actual reading skills, not just a thirty second fast moving clip of inane crap.
As for parental downtime, that's fair in the case of an RP who has them most of the time but a NRP on a once weekly visit, no.

I don't agree with screens for young kids.
But if I was your dd I'd be telling you where to go, hopefully she won't be daft enough to let you do this.
Her child her rules.

That's a very odd thing for the father to say to a 3 year old about it being his weekly visit before going back to her mum. A 3 year old wouldn't understand how long a week is surely.

Who made you the boss?

How do you know he hadn't spent the previous few hours playing with her one-on-one, taken her to soft play or gone swimming with her? Bit judgemental, really.

Intermittent choking over a meal at 3??

I would say, as others have, remember that you are seeing a few moments out of someone's life and unless you think someone is in some kind of danger, it's not your business.

I take my 16yo DS out to lunch in a restaurant about once a week. If you saw us you would likely be very judgmental, as I can feel some people around me are. We are both eating sitting looking at our phones on the table in front of us (me reading a book on Kindle, him most likely watching YouTube clips about the Ukranian war, or alternatively about other people playing Roblox games).

So:, this is what is really happening: He is autistic and non-speaking, and the way he talks is by typing into a text-to-speech app on his phone. So if he wants to talk to me he has to put down his knife and fork, lose his concentration on his food and type out what he wants to say. Given that he likes pontificating at great length about things he is interested in, this would probably mean his food gets cold and he never actually finishes it. And if he just had to sit there not watching something he would very quickly get bored and restless and start disturbing other people.

So we have agreed he doesn't talk while eating unless it's something urgent. I dont feel it is right for me to just talk at him when he can't reply, so we eat in companionable silence while enjoying reading or watching what we want to. When we get back in the car we chat all the way home.

If you judged me negatively by just what you saw in the restaurant you would be dead wrong.

Not saying that the situation here is necessarily anything comparable, but I would ask people not to be so judgemental when observing a few isolated minutes of a person's life.

A 3 year old intermittently choking? Sounds like a made up story to me, I've worked with many children and cared for many in my own time. Choking is a rare event, especially at 3. It's also a life threatening event so it is odd that you sat judging so hard and had to post on MN but didn't actually do anything to challenge him and protect the child's life.

Define "downtime".
Sports is downtime, being physically active is downtime.

Insisting on having kids "bored" is just lazy parenting. There's more than enough time at home as it is, we've seen how damaging physically and mentally it is to be "bored" and stuck at home during the lockdown. Never again, and we were privileged enough to be allowed outside (on our bloody daily walk) as it is!

They have more than enough time to read their books and watch rubbish on tv, I would fail as a parent to keep them home all day doing nothing. I don't spend my weekends at home doing nothing, never have, why would I impose that on my own children?

Of course they can. They'd certainly know that they only see daddy every once in a while, not every day. Do you only talk to toddlers in toddler language? interviews I've read with high achieving people often mention that they had adults in their life who didn't talk down to them. Who expected them to listen, ask questions and learn. If the dad said "weekly visit" the kid can ask "What's a week".."seven days..can you count to seven, let's see". But then I'm 100% certain someone will say that's performance parenting so you really can't win.

But if he had given her a book and was reading and interacting with her he'd have been accused of performative parenting and no doubt you'd have started a thread about that. Sometimes parents can't win.

No it's not insane. Lots of people are not as defensive as posters on here. Lots of people actually listen to the advice their parents give them.

the funny thing is that when we talk about childhood of the past, we also recall children going through the door first thing in the morning, and only coming back at diner time - with no involvement from parents whatsoever.

As always, it has always been a bit of both. A great parent yesterday will be a great parent today, with different tools and different opportunities. A lazy parent will be the same.

I am not sure grabbing the phone of your hand as the poster claim they would do qualifies as "advice" 😂

My god what an attitude. You wouldn't just speak to your Mum and ask her to back off? Straight to "fuck off"? Lovely.

People always excuse this but it’s so common now and it’s not good.
No one is saying not to be on screens ever in front of kids. We all need to from time to time. We all do our banking, shopping and deal with numerous important correspondence online but engaged parents don’t often just shut out their child like that. And if you’re out with them, at least engage with them for a short while before having to do your important thing on the phone.

@Idreamofelectricsheep you can't say "no one" though. What about my situation? There are always exceptions.

Have you even asked them if they want to spend time in the garden? Baking? Sorting out their toys? Watching films and having a relax?
There's plenty to do at home.

Just because you don't want to do that doesn't mean to say your children do.
I would hate to be carted about doing sports every weekend, and have no time at home.

The “snapshot” argument in this type of situation is just nonsense.

Yes, in a very small minority of cases, this
will be a one off. However, I’d put my house on it being what happens most of the time.

It’s dreadful, lazy parenting that doesn’t teach socialisation, and there are plenty of non-screen ways to entertain and actually engage with a child in this scenario.

Good for you. If I were your dd, I would agree with you! 😀