AIBU that reducing under 5s screen time is way more complicated than just issuing guidelines?

[Lovelygreenpen]

This guidance is welcome. We need to know facts and risks to make informed choices. But choices often aren’t made entirely freely. Think about healthy eating and exercise guidance and how complicated these can be to follow due to costs and time.

How would following this under 1 hour rule change your daily routine?
Most parents need to work all the hours with COLC and decades of rising housing costs. working life also often expands to expect parents to be in contact from home outside of paid work hours.
How are busy parents supposed to manage? How are solo working parents specifically supposed to manage? Any family with more than one child?
And what about the screens used in childcare settings?
What are the responsibilities of the makers of the crazy overstimulating content for babies and kids?

We know women often have to do more domestic labour than men, even where they live with a male partner. Also, that the makers of the content aimed at kids specifically employ addictive techniques.

So how is this pressured wider environment going to change to make this recommendation more realistic?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d936n7445o

Parenting is about doing what’s best, broadly, for your child. So whilst screen time every now and then isn’t problematic, regular access from a very young age is. That’s a fact. All the whataboutery about working full time or being under pressure. Those are adult problems, not children problems and it’s your job as a parent to make the best choices for your child. That’s your responsibility. Very often, screens just a lazy way to shut up children. Give them toys, colouring books, actual books. You’ll find almost all adults would rather a child be sat in a waiting room playing with a toy or reading a book rather than staring at Peppa Pig on blast on a phone.

Yes but I’m not talking about millennials. The poster asked what parents did before any screens of any sort and I said mum would be at home which was almost always true before TVs were invented.

'Parents are under a lot of pressure so they need breaks from their kids'......no, once you decide to commit to having children, me, me me does not apply. Otherwise, why have them?

Absolutely this. My DD has complex needs borne out of developmental trauma and when she was little she was like a bottomless well where attention was concerned. From her eyes opening in the morning, til closing at night she needed to be next to me (as in physically connected to me), needed constant play, chat, interaction and stimulation.

Having some TV time, or a video based game helped her regulate and let me attend to her brother who had similarly complex needs.

There have always been lazy parents, feckless parents, incompetent parents. There are also parents doing what they can to get through the day.

Again, to reiterate, my comment is in reference to someone who asked what parents did before any screens at all, including televisions.

Also, I’m a young millennial and I watched TV all of the time as a kid. My brother is an older Gen Z and he watched it even more than me, he also got consoles from a young age and played on those. We didn’t have iPads but we had personal TV/DVD things we’d take in the car on long journeys. So I think acting like this is a new thing is bullshit.

They don't take into account autistic children are different.

Tell that to the Boomer parents who shoved their kids outside as much as possible so they could have peace and quiet.

Most of the so called pressure comes from social media and comparing shiny, perfect, fake lives against normal lives.
I really don’t think the majority of people are getting annoyed at children being children in public. Some might, but what’s the worst that will happen? They’ll tut and roll their eyes and go on with their day. The parents could too but some will run to social media and complain about the mean lady and get lots of little back pats and compliments, and then everyone starts to think that everyone hates kids reading a book out loud in public.
Sometimes children are running riot or doing something they shouldn’t be and people rightly get annoyed but the answer is parenting not screen time. People moan that there is no support but then complain when someone tells their toddler not to stroke a random dog. That is the village people are talking about missing. I remember getting really told off by a stranger at about 9 for riding my bike on the wrong side of the road. I was mortified and cried but I never did it again.

@Sartre ah sorry missed that!

It's a big thing to compare the extremes, of 'before tv was invented' to 'when it's available 24/7 and literally in your pocket'

Though 30-40% of victorian working class women would suggest it was still more common than you'd think to have a working mother.

I think just bleating theory at people is counterproductive. Parents know what their job is. That doesn't magically give them to tools to do it perfectly. Pressure doesn't disappear just because you say it's an excuse. It's still there, and it's mostly falling on mothers.

Our eldest was diagnosed with ADHD when she was around 13 - her issues only became apparent at secondary school (she went to a small village school who were able to manage around her needs). Part of her diagnosis was a sleep deprived EEG test - and I had a really interesting talk with the person who did this and how brainwaves were affected by screen stimulation. Once we cut her screen time down, especially in the evenings we saw a huge difference hence she never had a TV/phone in her room.

I don't think kids under 5 need any form of screen time. And certainly not to entertain them while their parents are sat on their own phones...

Call be a bit 'out there' with my thinking, but there are these strange items called 'toys'. My three kids didn't have a screen until they were much older, and they spent their days playing with toys / out in the garden / making dens / colouring / crafting - they were always busy doing something. Yes, they watched a bit of TV, but it was only certain programmes they wanted to watch (night garden was a favourite right before bedtime!).

If we went out, either in the car or for a walk, I used to TALK to them about anything and everything - aeroplanes in the sky, birds in the trees, cats hiding, fog lingering on the fields, frosty mornings.....the world is such a beautiful place and my children were (and still are) fascinated by it all.

I see so many very young children with a phone shoved in front of them - and usually the parent is glued to one too. I get it that sometimes you need a quick fix to diffuse a situation, but it strikes me that staring at a screen is the default go to babysitter. 🤔

I once took my older DC on a 2 hr train journey to the seaside, I didn’t take screens to placate them. My DD was 4 and she was chatting away to me, definitely not shouting or making a fuss, just having a conversation with me. A woman across the aisle started going nuts at me out of nowhere saying she had a banging headache and needed NEEDED me to keep my daughter quiet. She went on and on and on at me really aggressively for a good 5 minutes solid. I felt like crying. I was a young mum and not super confident at the time. I also didn’t understand why she was quite so upset. Someone else stood up for me anyway and told her to shut the fuck up and go sit somewhere else if she had such an issue because the little girl is clearly just talking. I was so grateful.

My point is that yes strangers do get angry sometimes with children being children, it happens.

I was born in the mid 60s and my parents hated the fact that I watched morning tv during the six weeks holidays and turned it off! Talk to anyone my age or older and we all remember childhood programmes , yet we were told it would give us ‘ square eyes’
I suppose it just wasn’t on all the time and not as many channels or any peer pressure to have the latest gadgets or phones because they didn’t exist. It’s much harder now , but at aged two it’s a bit easier to ‘ police’ it must be a nightmare as they get older to stop them being too addicted to phones and primary schools use I pads I believe ?

I bet you wouldn’t find any/many children in the grammar schools that were handed a phone / tablet every 5 mins in their early years to keep them quiet. They were engaged with their parents and the world around them.

1 hour of screen time pre aged 5 is definitely enough for young minds. Let them enjoy real life, they shouldn’t be restricted to do so by a screen. It’s selfish parenting!

iPads and smartphones weren’t around when my DC were small, But TV/laptops were.
i wasn’t a mum that had CBeebies on all day etc, but we certainly used TV/watched dvds.
Baby Mozart was a godsend when DD was a baby - bung it in for 20 mins while cooking dinner. Think we had Bsby Bach too.
DC watched Tellytubbies/Fimbles when they were older babies/toddlers. Sometimes I watched with them. Sometimes I used it as a distraction to get some food in to them!
We did loads of outdoor play, the park, and educational toys, reading etc, but the TV was useful, I won’t lie, plus some CBeebies shows were educational or ‘wholesome’ like Balamory.
I also used to look at CBeebies w DD too in particular on the laptop. Obviously she couldn’t work it on her own!
As they got older they’d watch TV after school as I did as a child, it’s a great self-regulation tool. I do it still as an adult. They had clubs and playdates but it would go on if they just got in.

I think without explicitly guidance us parents have been able to sidestep the inconvenient truth about screen time for young children. It’s v similar to junk food I think- Yes it’s on the providers, but ultimately it’s on us as parents to make responsible decisions that are in their best interests. There are alternatives to screens, allowing children to be bored and to find ways to entertain themselves, which is really important for children’s development (and what we used to do until the last 10-15 years) these are not the easier options but nonetheless important…

It's not complicated, people just love a free, no effort baby sitter.

DS is autistic, he had no screens before 2, because I knew that was what was recommended. I remember being in church whisper reading him stories to try to keep him calm and quiet during the service - no one complained or tutted. Don't have your kids running around restaurants screaming or doing other unreasonable things and you probably won't get tutted or complained at.

But do you find yourself as an adult picking up the TV remote 100 times a day just to check what's happening?

Did you end up addicted to TV and spending 20 hours a day on it?

Did TV executives get sued for creating something that addicts children?

It's really not that deep.

My daughter was allowed access to a tablet from very young. Her dad and I had very different ideas about technology and screen time, and had it been up to me, she wouldn't have had access any devices except TV. But her dad is an equal parent and very tech minded, and he grew up with access to computers that I didn't even know existed at the time. I did set the boundaries around exactly what she was allowed to do on any handheld devices though. It wasn't daily and it was very limited, and she wasn't allowed to just sit and watch videos. I am vigilant about it because her dad would be much more relaxed about both access and content, and I know that because he is when I'm not around. It means I'm always the one setting boundaries and checking settings and talking to her about why I don't let her have it more and why 'her' phone stays in my drawer. Anyway when she was under 5, only 6 years ago, I feel like there was a much more instinctive understanding that it was something to use sparingly, that it was potentially quite harmful. Since then even in these 6 years - coincidentally since Covid - our entire society is built around screens and everything being online. Primary schools had digital literacy, now they're buying new iPads when they need more teachers. Parents are using it as a tool to 'manage' behaviour but without addressing the behaviour element. People don't want kids to make any noise whatsoever in public so parents are defaulting to 'keeping them quiet' with a phone. Nothing about society is child first, nothing.

My DGM work p/t - kids were left with wider family or played out as they lived near family and knew neigbours as they got bit older under watchful eyes older ones often made reposnsible for younger kids siblinsg cousins neigbours. It happend from shockingly young ages as well.

We did not play out and not at such young ages and didn't have famliy watching us - so we saw more TV. Did group once a week but think mum found it hugely isolating and bad for her mental health. Mum worked p/t when youngets started school. MIL worked when DH was a toddler - family watched him for free or in one place there was somewhere safe for her to leave him while she worked.

I think it's got harder as social networks have faded and it's less acceptable to have kids play out at such young ages. Parents in past often worked both or single parents - p/t or even ft but they had family support to do so and it was more acceptable to send kids off to play with sibling older cousins in house or outside or expect them to play by themselves.

I don’t see the issue. Everyone knows screens are bad. Use them or don’t. Is anyone really listening to the 1 hour guideline.

In our house tele is a privilege not a right and he can watch 1 or 2 episodes of something he wants a day.

He is allowed unlimited number blocks and alphablocks .

Or adult tv… like nature series, itchy boots (a woman motorcycling across the world) or cooking programs, or people watching in cities. Basically real paced non scripted stuff.

Why is the TV on in the background of her playroom when she plays or draws?