It's a screen time one...

[emeralue]

I utilise screen time very rarely for my 15 month old, however DS has developed what I can only describe as a bit of an obsession with watching videos of himself. It was GP who first started showing him the videos when he would go to stay there for the day and now whenever he sees my phone, he's constantly passing it to me to put these videos on. He's not interested in the likes of YouTube or kids programmes, it's just 15-60 clips of himself running around at toddler groups, playing with toys or stroking the dog on repeat. He likes to copy any gestures he makes in the videos and laughs when he's laughing, etc.

I have no idea whether to think this is in the same realms as what would normally constitute as screen time or not, so hoping to gain some thoughts.

Also I don't know if this is relevant or not but he does appear to have some concept of the person he's looking at being himself

Bless him! As with everything, fine occasionally. Obviously don't want him staring at videos of himself endlessly!

Maybe get him some mirrors to play with? A big fixed one and some smaller ones so he can interact with them. Put a sticker on his nose/cheek/forehead and see if he can work out how to peel it off looking at his reflection.

Another nice thing to do is get some photos developed of people he knows/the dog/places he likes/himself etc. and put them in an album for him/have them made into a photo book so he can read it to himself/you can look at it together.

If it's infrequent it doesn't sound like a problem. Mine love photo of themselves. The crucial thing is that if it is taking up too much time or getting annoying you need to go cold turkey so he forgets about it.

We are very similar with my 17 month old.. very limited screen time but he loves watching videos of himself. We've used it a little when he was upset and we couldn't calm him down in other ways (for example when in the car seat or the high chair) so showed him a video of himself. The problem for us is that when we stop or try to take it away he gets really upset and has a meltdown. He also like your baby 'asks' for videos on the phone so we've had to start keeping it out of sight. I wouldn't really class it as screen time though especially if it's just for infrequent short periods.