13 month old refusing to eat without screen time

[Mumtobe202310]

Hi All,

I hope you all and your LOs are all well.

I have a 13 month old LO and recently he refuses to eat many foods, unless he has my phone to watch some thing. I put things like Miss Rachel or Puffin Rock or Guess how much I love you.

I have avoided screens as best as I could for a long time. Only until LO was maybe 6 months did I introduce it properly and even then he wasn't even used to it because I hardly used it for long prior then.

However, I have health conditions and also PND. I'm in waiting for therapy.

Therefore, it has been extremely hard recently to deal with physical pain and also emotional pain. Some days, my son would be watching puffin rock on the high chair in kitchen with phone rested against the egg box and he's happy smiling to it and I'm preparing his lunch and I'd suddenly start sobbing and wipe my tears before I turn around kind of thing. This is how it can get. But it really has made it hard and I had to resort to screens for quite a few hours a day to get things done.

I have started to take him out even for walks or the mall just to change scenery etc but of course I don't have it in me to do it everyday because of how I can feel.

But, recently because of all this screen time I feel he has become so used to it and he won't eat without it. Sometimes he is fine ill take it and he doesn't mind he will play etc. But, thing is, he don't look at me while I'm trying to sing him a nursery rhyme or try to make him gesture along with the songs. He hardly makes eye contact, except sometimes. Few months ago he would hum along to miss Rachel songs and even sit with me and shake his rattle or repeat certain songs in a hum back but he doesn't anymore. He doesn't say many words apart from Mum and dad in our language and even that he hardly uses so I ambstarting to worry.

Is there any way I can help encourage his speech and make him get accustomed to less screen time?

Look - your mental health wasn’t in a good place and you did what you thought was right for you and baby at the time to keep things going. Honestly - good for you for keeping on keeping on.

It’s clear you’re in a better place now and are seeing things differently, want to do things differently. That’s ok too.

13 months is young for speech, don’t get hung up on that. Yes, there’s going to be an outlying child who is having full blown conversations etc at 13 months but that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with your son. There isn’t.

You want to change things, so do it. Perhaps put music on whilst you’re both eating so there is background noise. Even if he can’t answer you (again, totally normal), you chat to him during mealtimes.

Hi OP

sending hugs as PND is hard to go through. I've been through it myself and it is hard. Well done on getting help for it and starting to feel a bit better❤️

For food time, we don't allow screens at the table and mostly have the radio on. One idea I could suggest is sharing a plate of food or having the same food as him. Then turn it into a game, for example I ask which one should we try together? Can you find something red or green or white? "Let's try this food" and then make a super positive face/exaggeration "WOW THATS AMAZING! It tastes so good! Does yours taste the same?" Or even make silly faces after eating a food and ask him to copy (not a gross face incase it puts him off). It's tiring but it's a start for communicating together imo.

I've also done shaped sandwiches for a bit with cookie cutters, shaped cucumbers with the mini versions as well. Dinosaurs cutters are always a win and can ask him what dinosaur this is and mimics sounds. If he likes dinosaurs, can get a few more different shapes and get the "That's not my dinosaur book" to interact.

Toddler kitchen equipment is great to help in the kitchen to make lunches together. You get this little board, a peeler and knifes that are plastic (i think) that can cut fruit but not hands. I still hold the knife in my dd hand to make sure she still doesn't go near her hand till I feel confident enough😅

I hope this helps as it is hard to get away from screen time for little ones. I'm not super against tv time as it's a life saver for when I need a shower/wash my hair without someone bursting the door wide open or hearing bangs and panicking on what she's done🙈🤦‍♀️

I take a more relaxed view on screens than many here, but it's still far too much too young.

We did sometimes use screens from 6 months or so, mostly the dancing fruit videos, and it was pretty much 10 minutes a few times a week.

My eldest did watch quite a lot of TV when I was pregnant with my second, when she was probably from 14 to 20 months old, But that was because I had severe SPD, and by the time it came tomorrow afternoon I could just about hobble to the next room. My parents did child care 2 days a week, But for three afternoons a week after nap, there was a couple of hours of TV. We realised this wasn't great, and put little one in for a childminder, so she only had one afternoon of TV with me. It was only for a few months and then back to normal once the baby came.

You must know that this much screen time isn't good, and if that means you need to make alternative childcare arrangements to decrease it, then please consider that.

But it sounds like you're toddler has far more than that, and on a daily basis, and it's really affecting their development.

When they were toddlers I used to pride myself on how much I could get done in a single episode of duggee, because whilst I think some TV is fine, a few short bursts are better. Definitely don't leave the TV on as background noise, and if they aren't watching it, turn it off.

Don't listen or pay a lot of attention to anyone not having a degree in a subject covering children with more languages and experience with families. Not random mums or random teachers. If we have paid attention to all that advice based on 'I think you should' our children wouldn't master our native language. It's hard work to raise bilingual children but also fun.
There is a lot of good parenting groups for parents of children with more than one language On FB. I have found them useful.