What age did you let your little one start watching TV?

[mookiemoo]

What age did you start to allow your lo to watch TV? And do you think it’s had a positive or negative effect?

When my little boy started nursery at 9 months they done 30 minutes screen time a day and I started implementing it at home around the same age. Since about 2 it’s been 1hr a day and it’s still that now he is 4. The only exception is family movie nights which are more like 1hr30. TV time doesn’t affect his behaviour but I’m very strict about what he is allowed to watch.
I’ve never put on the TV for my 1 year old. She has just started the same nursery so she will be getting 30 minutes there. She doesn’t sit still anyway 😅 but she is usually around for her brothers hour of screen time but she never watches.

I will say though sick days and travel days are my exception. I have 0 screen time rules for those.

Well i had DC1 in lockdown so no way was I not going to have tv on, for my own sanity

My daughter sat with her Dad watching the Champions League final.
She was 16 days old 😂

For my DD it was 1. For DS it was from birth as DD was already watching it. We watched CBeebies and recorded Milkshake so we could not watch the ads…

We started allowing our son to watch tv when he was about 2.5 years old (he’s 3.5 now). We limit it to up to 2 hours per day (and unless it’s a movie, not all in one go), and we only allow tv on Saturday and Sunday. We’ve just told him we “don’t have internet” throughout the week.

As others have mentioned, sick days are exceptions and we tell him that because he’s poorly we’ve managed to “speak to the internet people and get some special extra internet”.

We’re quite discerning with what he watches, so nothing too fast paced, or over stimulating. We also don’t have an iPad or allow him to play with our phones, so the tv is in the playroom only. We also don’t allow him to ‘skip’ the intro, or click ‘watch next’, he has to wait til it comes on. I’ve no idea if this makes a difference but I’m trying to discourage him developing that instant dopamine hit of next, next, next immediately that is common in media now.

Overall I don’t think watching tv had had a positive or negative effect on him. He watches for a few hours on a weekend, especially helpful if I’ve got chores to catch up on, and happily turns it off when he’s done / the time is up. The thing that I think has made a difference I think is setting the rules clearly from the get go, tv is only at the weekend, and only in the playroom. These have always been our rules and so he has no reason to question or challenge them. In terms of turning it off at the end of the time limit, when it’s close to time up we just say “one more episode and then tv is finished” and get him to repeat that back to us, then he turns it off when the episode is over. I don’t want to restrict him completely from tv, but I also recognise it can be a slippery slope, and so tried to set limits from the beginning. Hope this helps!

Also to add, we only have one kid, and I think that makes it much easier to set limits around tv! If I had two to juggle no doubt we would have more tv!

Probably around 18 months to 2. I don’t think it’s made any difference. My youngest was a toddler during COVID. I had to work FT while home schooling a 7 year old and keeping a 2 year old alive. He pretty much watched tv about 8+ hours a day for those months! There weren’t other options. It was just the two of us, no family help even if it wasn’t COVID and we both had to work (but I was the only one who could wfh, so childcare was all on me).

I’ve rarely had any restrictions on tv time. But am very strict about devices, gaming, we don’t have tablets, no phones until secondary school and then strictly controlled. No YouTube, etc. Because it’s not a big deal, mine aren’t hugely fussed. They do watch tv and have certain series they are into. But they also just as readily choose to play outside, go ride bikes, play sports. We are very outdoorsy and they spend a lot of time not sitting in front of a screen, so I’m not bothered when they do.

The tv was on from birth so I guess then.

eldest has just smashed his exams and is off to uni and my youngest is doing fine too.

so I guess they survived

About two years old.

I had four DC (I'm now 70 so they're all adults) and sticking the telly on meant I could get stuff done. Cooking the dinner, for example.

Randomly my parents bought second hand tvs and when they worked I watched kids programmes from when I was about 2 - think play school, Camberwick Green, Bagpuss, Blue Peter etc (that’s just aged me!) but only for the length of the programme. However, once the tv stopped working it wouldn’t be replaced for a while (could be years). Books became my imaginary world as a result.
Scrolling on screens is the problem, sitting to watch a favourite show and doing that one thing only - probably not a problem.

I’ve never had screen time rules. My son learned times tables at a precocious age from Mickey Mouse, counting backwards from Barney, counting in Spanish from Handy Manny.

We only watched things that could teach him things though, nothing like videos of dancing fruit and teletubbies.

He is now about to start uni and we are expecting a full set of A/A* for his A-level results last week.

Since birth. We limit on demand TV because it makes DD (well the smaller one) unreasonable but cbeebies is on most of the time. Not that DD sits and watches it constantly, she pretty much just looks up if there's singing and then gets on with whatever she's doing.

DD7 turns into a zombie so we do limit her a bit (she's naturally limited by virtue of having a little sister anyway) and make sure we watch with her.

20-24 months. But it's slow paced stuff, like Little Bear which is very old and it's a whole 20 minute episode (so there's no scrolling, moving on to the next thing etc). When they were more like 3, screen time increased from 20 minutes to an hour-ish at the weekend.

I didn’t have a television until my daughter was eight or nine. She watched it at nursery and other people’s houses.

Three. He didn't take a blind bit of notice of it sadly, I was hoping it would give me a bit of time to myself 🤣

This. When mine were small there wasn't screen time rules. Nowadays the TV programmes are very high in stimulation. The old ones weren't. Mine loved Barney too. Lots of learning and singing. Rosie and Jim. Also loved Percy the park keeper. Got a 1st at uni. Never did any of mine any harm at all.

You just have to pick the right shows, all of Disney junior was fine, as was Barney, just avoided all of the non-educational stuff and it was fine.

We all watch tv whenever we want and always have. Its always on for background noise. Not noticed any extra limbs or strange ticks so far.

From birth. They dipped in and out whilst playing. Never had an issue and they’re very active.

We’ve never really limited it.
She’s now 10 and it’s almost always on if we’re home.
She’s also GDS in everything, top of her class, loves to read and write her own stories and will almost certainly ace the 11+ next month.
TV is not a demon.

As above, aged 1 on day 1 of the pandemic!

Do you want the answer in minutes or hours?

At about 3½. She's not 6½, She gets about 30 minutes a day, 3-4 days a week.

DC1 was 2 in COVID so since then - he wasn't that interested before tbh but I guess when your only playmates are your parents the TV is more interesting! DC2 has always seen it. I don't think it makes any difference tbh, they usually watch CBBC or cbeebies shows,though they both really like Gardeners World at the moment.

I had two November babies so we spent much of their first winter snuggled up together watching the snooker and darts.

18 months old and never watched the TV. Trying to hold off on as long as possible. I've seen the studies saying under 2s should get 0 screentime so have been working from that. She plays so nicely without the TV i just couldn't see any benefit for her to have it on, I can see how it would make MY life easier though but yer wellbeing and development come first.