Limiting screen time with my three year old

[redhatwhitebeard]

I am a single parent and have a wonderful relationship with my three year old. However, I work full time and feel since coming back from Christmas holidays I am relying too much on the iPad and Tv before and after nursery. I know it is not a healthy routine to be in. I don't want to cut screen time completely but I need my child to realise one or two episodes of a show a night as a treat is enough. My child does not like independent play, so I use it so I can cook the dinner and do any house chores. They love arts and crafts and I'm going to make sure I spend half an hour after work doing some together before doing the meal. Any other top tips to start limiting TV time would be greatly appreciated (and yes I know I could go cold turkey but want to ask if anyone has any tried or texted methods) x

I would go cold turkey on the iPad. Tv I wouldn't worry about after a long nursery day. They're tired and it's nice to relax and watch a bit of telly. Especially if you're using it at a time when you're needing to get something important done I.e., dinner.

I make an effort not to put it on in the morning as I need the uninterrupted time more in the evening. Maybe do a craft in the morning before nursery and telly in the evening while you cook dinner. Or do slow cooker meals some days and have telly for a bit in the morning and free up your evening to do a craft or something together.

Similar to the advice for children's eating and nutrition: look at how much telly there has been in one week rather than one day. Some days we watch more than usual, some none at all. I'd say it's only a concern if it's affecting behaviour or if your child is throwing tantrums to watch telly/can't accept it being switched off or not watching any for a day or two.

Having a consistent routine with the tv helps a lot. So here with older kids we have screens after homework and we turn off for dinner. So it’s 1 programs for us. We do this every school day. The weekend they probably watch too much but they are busy too so it all evens out.

We do no TV in the mornings in fact in the mornings we only go downstairs to put shoes on to go out of the front door. I am not a morning person so we have a very slick operation of me going downstairs to make a coffee and oat milk for the two of us. We drink them and get dressed and teeth brushed upstairs. Downstairs for shoes and coats with all doors to fun things closed. We out our of the house in 20 to 30 minutes. In the short term to break the habit I would take so quiet toys either upstairs or to a part of the downstairs where there is no other toys.

My daughter will play be herself but after nursery sometimes wants more attention but we do need to cook! We have better success by matching the amount of time she has on the TV for the length of the programme. If it's 10 minutes she gets Sarah and duck or JoJo and gran gran or Shaun the sheep. If she gets 30 minutes we has a Julia Donaldson programme. Of I need longer to blitz the house she gets a film. For us the flitting from short program to program or endless short programs created more confrontation. We also set a timer of the TV for the amount of time she has and then it puts itself to sleep. We tell her the TV might get tired and go for a sleep when we sit her down. We have been doing this for about 4 months now and we have times when she turns the TV off after two episodes of JoJo and gran gran and goes and plays.