TV time mum guilt

[GreyLemur]

My 15 month old is very energetic and full on, racing around whenever he is awake, very low sleep needs so has 1 hour in the day, sleeps 9pm-7am and up multiple times in the night to feed.

The only way I can get him to sit still in the day is to watch a bit of Puffin Rock on Netflix or Camberwick Green on ITVx. Both low stimulation. He enjoys it and we talk about it while it's on, he watches for about 10 minutes then he's bored and up again. Not when he's eating, we sit and cuddle on the sofa or on the bed.

I know the guidance is no TV before 2, but it's a very long day racing around after him. Is there anything else I can do to get him to have some 'chilll' moments in the day?? Or is this use of TV okay?

I think little bit of tv is fine, especially if you’re there talking about it to him and it’s low stimulation. I pop my 11 month old infront of the tv with some nursery rhymes for a few minutes whilst I need to pop into the garden to hang the washing out quickly for example. He’s learnt to clap at the right time to Wind the bobbin up, so doesn’t seem to do him any harm in short bursts!
You could look at getting a tonie box or yoto player. Then your son can choose a story or song but there’s no screen time. We have a tonie box for our 3 year old but the baby likes putting the different characters on it too.

@Hathead18We do have a tonie actually. He likes swapping out the characters at super speed so we only hear the first 5 seconds of everything. But I suppose it does keep him in the same place for a few minutes, until he decides the characters are for eating instead of listening to, and wanders round with them in his mouth!

They don't have much attention span at this age and I wouldn't worry about 10 minutes of TV, it's fine.

Do whatever you need to get through! Being a parent is hard, if you need half an hour Tv time for your sanity then that’s what you do! An hour a day of Tv isn’t affecting anybody but it might make you a little happier whilst you have a break!

thats fine! Kids with older siblings watch a lot more than that.

10 minutes is unlikely to do any harm, but I wonder if it would also work to make sure at least one room in the house is fully childproofed and then he can run around to his hearts' content without you needing to follow him?

The guidance varies by country. UK guidance is that under-2s should avoid solo TV watching, so it's OK for them to watch together with you.

I did the same at that age. Little bit of telly together when we both just need to sit down. Useful when you need to cut their nails or get a splinter out with tweezers too. Mine is two and a bit, we watch telly together maybe 2-3 times per week, about twenty minutes at a time. Even the friends who say "oh my toddler doesn't watch TV" turn out to watch Ms Rachel (never seen it personally) or Spanish language nursery rhymes on YouTube.

@OtterMummy2024 That's literally it, sometimes we just both need to sit down!

It’s fine, but for the sake of ten minutes it seems pointless. He’ll grow out of it and the wonderful days of feature length movies will come. When my son was a bonkers toddler I preferred to be outdoors with him as much as possible.

@Yourethebeerthief Oo I can't wait until we can watch a Disney film together! But until then a couple of blocks of 10 mins just gets me through the day!

10 minutes is absolutely fine. Maybe see if anything else can catch his attention for a little bit longer!

Don’t worry about it, a little bit of kids TV is fine.
Mine both had CBeebies on occasionally when they were toddlers and they are both fine, no issues with speech and exceeding expectations in school (aged 11 & 15 now).

What’s bad is hours of individual screen time watching nonsense on YouTube with no adult interaction

Nothing wrong with that. The trouble is all the programs on TV nowadays are very high stimulation. The older programs are so much better. Mine loved Percy the park keeper with all the animals which you could talk about. Around 2 they loved Barney which was all about singing and learning. It won't do him any harm at all.

Absolutely fine. My two year old watched about an hour with his older sisters today.