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

Oh go away 🙄

So what will happen if parents allow more than an hour of screen time?
And how will it be policed?

I absolutely hate standing around outside in the cold, rain and wind and so do my kids. I've always hated it. My family were very outdoorsy unfortunately so I have many a memory of being dragged outside constantly. Hated it then hate it now.

"Oh you like Peppa Pig, let’s make a Peppa Pig (ham) sandwich together for lunch."

Guess that's one way of putting them off watching Peppa! 😂

If you have a working parent then the child is presumably at nursery or school. No screens there. They get home 5.oish. Dinner . An hour of screen. Bath bed. That's not that hard
Days off, need to get them busy. Under 5s can easily be entertained with no screens!

Both of mine have iPads. The iPads are ‘broken’ in my wardrobe and only get ‘fixed’ for flights. They never ask for them. TV is fine if they’re watching together and conversing about what they’re watching.
isolated personal screens with scrolling every few seconds is just terrible parenting

To me this seems really logical, and broadly inline with the guidance published today. If it’s not on a handheld device, it’s more likely this is a shared watching experience (even if the parent is doing another task, the can still engage with the programme and child). And as another poster said, out of the house should be plenty of stimulus.

Because the overall standard of parenting in this country is very low. People can't be bothered and just want an easy life.
They know books exist but don't see their value, just as they don't see the value of doing other positive activities with their children. I

'You’re told women should work, to be equal'

• this bit : that's a wrong way for people to think, someone who's a SAHP can be equal. It is important for a SAHP (male or female) imo to have skills they can use to get jobs of need be,,and time out of the labour force can leave them vulnerable, but people shouldn't be dictating that SAHPs are unequal.

It sounds like your job is very hard to compartmentalise if it's ad hoc, which sounds very stressful. 💐 May I ask what ages your kids are? If they're older, do they not have hobbies they can entertain themselves with in their rooms when you're busy? I appreciate this is different with different kids and some will find this harder.

It’s a guideline ! Don’t fret . My kids have all had a iPad since 3 , well oldest was 7 as that’s when the first iPad came out . At that age they didn’t really stay that long , my 4 year old occasionally spends 10 m on it then goes to play and ru a round and follows me around then a few more minutes on the iPad an hour after . I never noticed any issues .

Plenty of books (as in, never welt out without at least 4-5 different books) and sensory toys (lots of textures, chew toys). DC was verbal and fairly high functioning though, I know it’s not always as easy. He wasn’t really engaging with other kids until he was 5yo or so but wouldn’t mind others playing around him.

I'm a 70's born baby. Obviously dont remember how my mum kept me and my older brother entertained a very young age. But we survived and grew without the technology of today. I do have vague memories of her getting ready for work, before school drop off and we played with our toys, or we got a short sharp not now I'm busy and off we went and entertained ourselves. But back then we also played alot outside with the other kids in the street, all different ages playing together, sadly you rarely see this now.

Ultimately it's the parents decision to use screen time to parent 🙄

I was born in early 2000s and wasn't fully convinced by your post either. House prices maybe. Certainly all the mothers my mother knew worked , as so did she. Grandparents : my grandmother was super involved but others wanted to be but lived top far away. A grandparent wanting less time childbearing as they get older isn't necessarily being selfish.

But are screens as necessary as hot water & electricity? 🤔

I didn’t show my son a screen at all before 18 months now it’s 2-3 times a week absolutely maximum (this week one one hour today all week). There is no need for it, if they don’t have tv as an option they will play with toys or listen to audiobooks or play with adults.

I don’t have sympathy for people who think it’s impossible to parent with the new recommended amount (or less than) of screen time. I was a single parent from when my daughter was 2. I had an old house that was falling down, three dogs, some gerbils and some chickens. There are plenty of other options. You cut your cloth accordingly. I feel like we are becoming such a lazy generation. We are all addicted to screens and it isn’t doing any of us any good. But as adults we have free choice. Children don’t.

ps op do you work while your children watch screens? If they are little they should be in childcare while you work, if they are bigger they could be reading or doing art or doing chores or writing stories or playing with toys

Exactly.

Important point.

This. Studies show parents now actually tend to spend more time than 60 or so years ago. The difference is that there's perceived to not be the option of 'go out to play' so much, so something else is needed, and once used, screens are addictive

Parents need to stop using their phones so much in front of children. It’s not just the kids that need to reduce their usage.
Little children want handheld devices because they see grown ups using them.
The little kids I see using hand held devices out and about are usually using their parents’ smartphones - because they’ve been shoved at them to keep them quiet eg on the tube/in the restaurant/in the waiting room etc.
Once they’ve got their hands on the phones the little kids get so engrossed they don’t want to give the phones back - so the parents let them keep hold of them. I’ve seen this play out time and again.
My children are older, so I’m not facing this challenge, but I bet what I’m seeing outdoors is also what’s happening indoors all day every day.
I remember trying to restrict my kids’ TV viewing to 1 hour a day (at primary school age) and that was hard enough sometimes so I really feel for parents of little ones these days.

Why would it "rule it out" - surely watching a whole film is an occasional thing not an everyday thing, so it's fine. We let children go over their recommended daily sugar allowance on special occasions like a birthday party even if we try to keep sugar in their diet low in general. There is space for flexibility even with guidelines.

My DC do get too much screentime mainly because I feel DH reaches for it too quickly and encourages them to overuse it. I admit I am bad for giving in when I'm tired and CBA to argue about it though.

Not all screen time is equal. We have taken a pragmatic approach to screens with my now 5 year old and the amount of time allowed is based on what she is watching.
Short high energy cartoons/TV shows - rare capped at 2 episodes 20 minutes
Low energy animated shows - allowed a couple of times a week 2-4 episodes
Shows with people doing stuff - Lego masters, great pottery throw down, junior bakeoff, inside the factory Saved for weekends when either we are low in energy and we watch as a family or we need to get something specific requiring both of us.
If she is ill and sofa bound she gets films.

She also likes watching you tube videos but these are supervised and we talk about them. We watch things like how crayons are made, inside various towers, aircraft landing and taking off aircraft carriers that sort of thing. She never has TV in the mornings or between dinner and bedtime, she naturally favours shows where people are doing things rather than cartoons. She then takes what she has learnt and adapts it into her play. We built so many Duplo toilets when she was ~3 after an episode of Lego masters!
We bought her a tablet when she was 4 but this was with the idea that her own tablet we can be more ruthless with the restrictions. The default timer is 10 minutes and she gets more depending on what she wants to do and how much other screen time she has had. She typically uses it 2-3 times a month for ~30 minutes. She only has a handful of apps on it, no web browser or YouTube.

This is exactly what I was about to say. Children can learn to sit quietly but you have to teach them! By giving a screen they will never learn the skills.
The ‘problems’ are being exacerbated by screen time not solved.