Honestly, how much TV does your 1 year old (or around) watch?

[bail]

No judgements here pls!

I have a gorgeous DS aged 1 year old. Extremely lively, and we do A LOT (playground once a day, playdate 2x a week, gymboree 1x a week and MiniMozart 1x a week and every other week we go to LittleGym (at £19 a session, too expensive to do every week!). He LOVES these activities and actually, so do I.

When we arrive home after an afternoon's activities, I tend to be desperate for a cup of tea and a sit down. So what do I do? DS in playpen in lounge and turn CBeebies on. He loves it, and gives me 15 mins to relax with my tea and computer. I keep it then on whilst preparing his dinner. So 30 mins in total. The TV is off for his main course and then I switch back on for his dessert whilst I tidy up the devastation, so an additional 10 mins.

So my 1 year old is having approx 40 mins of TV a day. Sometimes less, sometimes a little more (up to an hour in total)

What do people think and what do others do? I don't think I have a problem with it, as for the rest of the day we are doing so much, communicating and interacting with each other, active etc. Combined with an avalanche of kisses and cuddles. However, it does sometimes niggle that maybe I am doing something wrong.

DS (17mo) doesn't watch any TV but I have accepted that my house is going to look like a bomb site until I get to tidy up when he's gone to bed and I don't get stressed about it.

My thoughts on TV are that I'd prefer to wait until he knew what it was about so that I can choose with him something to watch (not just sticking it on no matter what the programme is), watch it together and talk about it afterwards. My brother and I used to snuggle into bed with our parents one weekday evening with a bowl of popcorn and watch Captain Scarlet together (old emoticon!) and I still remember how special that felt. On the other hand, we used to watch all the rubbish that used to be weekend morning kid's TV, whether we liked it or not and that wasted a good few hours of the day. I was reading just this afternoon that an average child will watch 20000 (yep, twenty thousand) hours of TV by the time they are 16, which is roughly double the amount of time they spend at school. What else could you be doing with all that time?!

Thanks for all your comments, really appreciate it.

Someone asked why I put DS in playpen. Reasonable question. DS loves it! He is going through an extremely clingy phase atm, but when I put him in playpen, he instantaneously calms down. I think because he likes the feeling of being enclosed, and I am about 2 metres away at the dining table.

I think that what I am going to do is cut out the TV around eating. Completely. But keep the 15 - 30 mins in total a day when we come in from being outside and I need a refuel i.e. a cup of tea. He enjoys it, relaxes him, wind down from our busy days before dinner.

Oh how I WISH my dd would watch tv!

DS1 didn't really watch any TV at that age, I'd decided that I didn't want him to watch it until he was 2 and then I got pregnant just before he was 2. I didn't want DS2 to be watching from birth so I never got round to introducing DS1 to it.

DS2 is 7 months now and we still don't watch, DS1 occasionally looks at car videos on youtube and I've tried to persuade him to watch a pingu DVD when I've been ill, I've turned Cbeebies on a couple of times but not found a programme yet which doesn't make me want to do unpleasant things to whoever created it. When I've been visiting friends and they've had the TV on DS1 will watch really intently for about a minute and then scamper off to do something else and DS2 just ignores it.

DS1 is very good at self entertaining but I'm not sure whether he's like that because he doesn't watch TV, or if I find it easy not to have the TV on because he's like that IYSWIM.

None really, DH and I will watch the TV whilst she is in the room and she will sometimes stop what she is doing to look at it if something brightly coloured comes on etc. but is generally to busy to try climb and destroy everything or mugging the poor cat.

12 month DD - 30 mins or less in the am while I tidy up breakfast etc and 30 mins or less at teatime while I cook. If she napped more I'd do chores then, but she doesn't :-(

My DS is 11months and me and DP have agreed not to let him watch telly until at least 2yrs. One of my friends is adamant that watching TV too early is part of the reason kids have more ADHD and short attention spans and has done all sorts of research on the subject. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with that, mostly I just detest childrens telly and prefer to have the radio on or sing a song or let him play with his toys. He'll be watching telly soon enough once he goes to school so I'd like to start him out with memories that don't involve the boobtube.
HOWEVER DP seems to think that when he plays his horrible shoot em up war game on the PS3 it's ok if DS is in the room. TBH it's maybe 15 minutes a week total but I can't help feeling guilty and hyprocritical. DP has no qualms because he can't wait for DS to grow up so they can play videogames together

My DD is 10 months and at the moment the TV doesn't go on. A few months ago I was turning the TV on around 4.00pm and watching stuff I'd taped, but decided that wasn't great, so no TV during the day at all now. Not sure at what age we will let her, but will probably try and keep her off it as long as possible.

None during the week (no time) and probably 30 minutes of recorded CBeebies on Sat and Sun. DD1, 3 yo, watches avidly due to novelty. DD2, 1.5 yo, is entirely uninterested (we also think she might be short sighted). I'm not convinced that a moderate amount of age appropriate TV does any harm at all (to the children). It does, however, irritate me. DD1's going through an 'Everything is Rosie' phase ... STUPID theme-tune, ridiculous characters, inane plotlines, stereotypical sex roles esp recalcitrant Will and wimpish Holly. Ugh.

None at all - we don't have a tv licence.

DS is 1 year old and and while i have tried a few times to get him interested, he doesn't care about tv at all. I don't really miss it to be honest, it will come when it will come.

DS is 13 months. I turn BBC Breakfast on when I bring him into bed for his morning feed, and when he's finished I turn over to the cartoons on C5 (Peppa Pig, Mr Men etc) in a vain attempt to keep him happy snuggled up between us in bed for a bit. He normally watches it for about three minutes before wanting to get down and play.

I quite often (maybe three times a week) turn on CBeebies in the later afternoon when DS is getting grumpy, but again his attention span for TV is only five minutes or less. He'd rather play with the remote controls.

Occasionally if DS is tired and grumpy at other times of the day and I'm trying to keep him going for whatever reason, I'll get him on my lap for a cuddle and stick CBeebies on. Normally just a quiet sit down and a cuddle doing something as passive as TV viewing for a few minutes revives him enough to carry on playing.

I'm not going to feel guilty about any of this!

DS1- none until 2.4 when DS2 was born and he got a Meg and Mog DVD which he got 1 episode a day (5 minutes I think). At 3.5 he watches about half and hour every couple of days or so.

DS2 (15 months)- doesn't watch anything as such as he's usually sleeping when DS1 is watching. Realistically he probably sees about 10 minutes a week in passing. Will try to stick to the no screen rule until after 2 for him as well.

We don't have a functioning TV, so no CBeebies.

A lot of DS1's friends watch a fair amount of TV and have done since quite young. Tbh there's no difference I can see between DS and his friends as far as language development etc. They all do lots of other things and are read to and interacted with.

I think the problem is when the TV is on all the time (background noise) and they have very little interaction withe their carer, which isn't the case with anyone on this thread.

none as far as I can tell, we have the tv on for DS1 but DS2 15 months seems completely oblivious I wonder sometimes if this is a bad thing?!

At that age, none.

Now at 22 months he knows of two tv shows - meg and mog and Thomas... Only let him watch 1 at a time in a day (so 5-10 mins max). I've noticed that sometimes at bedtime he'll go on and on about meg and mog and owl at the "doctor" (which is only on the tv series, so I know it's that) so am uneasy about him watching too much. Plus I had nightmares as a young kid about sesame street so don't want the same to happen to him! (although it could just have been sesame street )

Mine's 2.7 and watches an hour a day, which has been the agreed-upon limit since she was, can't remember, about a year old? Before that I don't really know how much she watched because I was working almost fulltime and her Dad was at home with her, and he knew I didn't like her watching so I think he didn't admit to using TV. The agreed-upon hour was me attempting to have some control over the situation, although I did recognise that if he was at home with her, it was his choice whether the TV was on, not mine.

Honestly, if I'd been the SAHM I'd have tried incredibly hard to stick to none-under-2. This is my one big parenting issue with DH. He grew up in an on-all-the-time household, I grew up TV-free. I hate TV. I don't mean that smugly, I promise, I just mean I hate it for me, I hate the noise, I hate the flickering images, I find it hard to relax or concentrate when it's on, I hate it.

I think an hour a day is too much for DD still but I rely on it now for my bit of downtime since she's not an independent player, and I hate that I do rely on it, it makes me feel utterly crap as a parent that I can't spend all day with her without resorting. I hope that when she's a bit older and can read or play outside on her own, I can limit TV to weekends only.

Absolutely none. No TV downstairs.

At 1yrs old DD watched perhaps 30 mins of CBeebies or a age-appropriate DVD a day. She's 3 now and watches an hour (CBeebies or Peppa Pig DVDs) a day, a little more on weekends. She no longer naps so she needs some chill down time. We're always out and about and she's an active little thing. She's bright and has an amazing imagination. I have no problem with TV because it doesn't seem to have hindered her development at all. In fact she learned her numbers from Numberjacks and loves all the lessons on sharing etc on Peppa Pig.

I found the tiredness associated with DS's glue ear was exasperated by watching too much television because the speech is never exactly matched to the lip moving and so chidren with hearing problems have to concentrate even harder to work out what is being said. MIL who is deaf in one ear confirmed that she finds this.

Is that what your consultant meant? Glue ear can't be caused by television unless television is more evil that we think!

skimty- is that true, that tiredness is associated with glue ear? Why has no-one mentioned this to me before? My DD is always tired... they even sent her to a cardiologist to make sure all was well!

None for my 11 month old. But your amount sounds fine to me!!