eye contact in 11 monfh old

[varicoseveined]

Hopefully this might be a case of pfb paranoia!

My DD is 11 months old. Babbles nicely, is cruising and has met pretty much all of the milestones at the average times so far. I'm a bit worried about her eye contact though... she does look at me when I talk to her sometimes and sometimes she looks at me when she's babbling to me... however other times she completely ignores me. Could this be because she's engrossed in playing at that moment?

My MIL looks after her but always has the telly on as background noise, and sometimes DD is staring at the screen. When I mention it to DH and even my mum they think I'm crazy to not want the telly on all the time when she's awake. I just think it's too much of a distraction.

Am I being silly?

You are not being silly about the telly thing. That drives me MAD - and practically everyone I know has the telly on all the time. It really drives me round the twist actually. DD2 does her own thing, but DD1 zones out really badly with the tv.

A few kids I know who are exposed to alot of TV are not as sociable as my DDs - but that may not be a direct link to the TV, I accept that.

Unforutnately you are always going to have the issue that MIL looks after her, so there is a limit to how much you can influence. It might be worth asking her not to have tv on all day, but as I say, it is her house and she's doing you a favour.... Maybe if you could get some good evidence in a book or something about child development to back you up, then casually mention it and show to DH....?

thanks PotPourri, will google for a book on the telly topic.

Boy this parenting lark is worrisome. I'll bring DD to see the HV next week to see what she think about the level of eye contact I get from DD.

Imo the telly is a red herring. Maybe it does affect some children but it doesn't seem to have negatively affected my 9.
As long as your baby is making some eye contact then I don't think there is a problem. I think you are right that she is interested in other things and probably you are just getting in the way
I wouldn't worry too much about this unless it got to the point where she rarely made eye contact with anyone.

9???!! My heroine!

She is very sociable, I suppose I'm feeling a bit guilty about how much interaction she's getting - I'm a real worrywart!