Before anybody thinks I'm being precious about screentime, I'm totally fine with small amounts of it throughout the week and am not anti screen.
Here's the issue. Both DH and I work full time. 2yo DS goes to nursery full time.
On the days that DS is at home, I try to keep his toys/books out and accessible so that he's got options to entertain himself, and of course he'll often just potter around after me as I'm doing jobs around the house. I'll normally let him watch an episode or two of his favourite CBeebies program after he's had his breakfast (whilst I wash up), and then an episode or two before dinner. So max total screen time a day is 2 x 15 min chunks, and some days it's none at all.
I'll often take DS out to the shops, the park, to role play centres, playdates with friends and family and found that this works well for DS, he's not over stimulated by screens and is much happier when we're actually doing stuff with him. Compared to some of the posts I see on here, I probably don't take DS out ENOUGH, but I aim for once a day.
I've recently had to take on an additional commitment which has meant DH has to take care of DS a bit more. This morning , between the hours of 8am and 11am, DS has been in front of the tv for about 2.5hrs, with the other 30 mins at 9.30am being outside where I had set up cold water play, toys etc in the shade out of the sun.
I know it's hot today so wasn't expecting DS to be outside for hours, but I do expect DH to at least make some effort in encouraging DS to build blocks/ play cars, trains/ do some drawing / read some books.
I'm annoyed because I'm ALWAYS trying to keep DS occupied in any way I can (even if its him emptying the Tupperware cupboard), and try 5 things before I resort to the telly.
I probably wouldn't be so annoyed if it was a rainy day and DS was a bit older . But he's only 2, his brain is rife for expanding and DH just sits on his bloody phone and plonks DS in front of the tv so he doesn't have to parent!