Screen time question

[Mamabear04]

How much TV do you let your child watch and when during the day do you allow it? How old is your child?

Just thinking now TV is on demand that my 3yo watches far more TV than I ever would have as a child and wondering whether to cut her screen time down. We don't have any tablets etc so the TV is her only screen time. I'm not interested in people who don't let their kids watch TV, sorry not sorry!

2.5 year old probably watches an hour a day on average. Roughly 20 mins in the morning and 30-40 mins in the evening. On none-nursery days there may be another 20 mins at lunch time. They are an only DC and in nursery 3 days a week. I know friends who are at home with both a toddler and a tiny baby have the TV on more than that. Whatever you gotta do to survive!

I'm pretty much identical to @WibbleW0bble
It's the only way I can get meals prepped and cooked.

2yo and 5yo.

Term time, weekdays - only after dinner before bath and bed, usually around 20-30 mins, but can be 10 minutes or an hour depending on when we eat dinner.

Weekends and school holidays - 5 year old will have some screen time while little one sleeps after lunch so an hour or so in addition to the after dinner time.

Overall, 2yo max of one hour, 5yo max of two hours, but usually less.

(In cases of them or me being ill all limits go out the window).

My DCs are 6 and 8yo. Mon-Fri they are allowed screen time every day after school as long as they've done at least 10 mins of reading and the 8yo has also done 10 mins of TT Rockstars. However, one or both have clubs most days, so Mon-Weds they get 30mins/day max, Thursday they could have up to 1.5hrs, but Friday they tend to veg in front of the TV so ~4hrs (they usually watch a couple of films). They won't always use all of their available time for screens though, as they like to play with toys too and DD1 spends some time on her sewing machine through the week. During the summer they will usually choose to play in the garden over TV.
Saturday and Sunday depend on what else we have on, but we don't allow more that a couple of hours consecutively. Over the week it probably adds up to around 12 hours at this time of year.

When they were toddler/preschool age they watched more TV as it was the only reliable way of keeping them safely in one place whilst I cooked etc. I've never felt guilty about the screen time they get as they do plenty of other stuff, we spend a lot of time engaging with them outside of screen time, and they've always watched/played a range of programmes/games.

I use to let my kids watch a fair bit of tv but they were usually very active kids and they liked doing a lot of other things like reading and Lego so I didn't feel watching tv made them less inclined to do other things.

The thing that I did which worked well was only having the TV on when they were specifically watching the tv. I never just had it on in the background. Some of their friends would have the Ty on in the background all the time. I thought that was pointless.