
Ask HN: How do you manage screen time for your toddler? - alanthonyc
The past few years have been a blur of falling in love, marriage, pregnancies, and births.<p>Now, I find myself the father of an infant baby and a two-year old.<p>I’m trying to do my best by them and limiting screen time to facetime with out of town relatives.<p>My wife uses her phone to share pictures.<p>At barely two, our toddler is starting to ask to “see see” the phone more and more.<p>Any tips?
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ian0
When my son was around 2 he became addicted to youtube. We like other parents
fell into the pitfall of allowing him to look at videos when we went out for
meals to keep him occupied. We strictly limited usage but it got to the point
where if he didn't get the phone he threw a tantrum.

One day we decided just to ban the phone outright, cold turkey. The tantrums
lasted for a day or two then he forgot about it completely. I cant proove it
was related, but we noticed an immediate increase in his level of vocabulary.
Fast forward 4 years and we now use the phone only for calling granny and
using the stargazing app at night.

PS We took this lesson and hit upon a great related strategy. We started to
artificially "limit" book time with the young kids. And of course this just
improves their excitement around reading! Scarcity in action :P

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enonevets
My kids are a bit older now but at the age, I find it was relatively easy to
redirect their attention away from screens. At that age they're quite curious
and will generally jump to the next interesting thing and quickly move on for
a bit. I recommend engaging and offering productive playtime to help them move
onto other activities.

As they got older we implemented a one hour screen time limit per day for all
screen types (including TV) but that they could earn more screen time if they
read, did chores, finished their homework early, help each other in some way,
etc with a hard limit of 2 hours max screen time per day with rare exceptions
to exceed that.

So far we're happy with the results and the amount of time they spend doing
other activities.

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auslegung
Our story sounds very similar to yours. We allow them to use the computer but
only while we’re holding them, and they’re so young they just bang on the
keyboard imitating us. So I open a text editor and let them go nuts. Similar
deal with the phone. As for TV we show them animal documentaries, or train
documentaries, etc, and an hour a week probably. Our goal is to teach our
children to use “screens” correctly, rather than severely limiting them. But
these things are inherently addictive, far more stimulating than real life,
and warrant real concern and intentionality. If we are on them 5 hours a week
in their view, they will want them 15 hours a week, so we must limit
ourselves, too.

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DoreenMichele
_At barely two, our toddler is starting to ask to “see see” the phone more and
more.

Any tips?_

You and your wife are probably chronically sleep deprived and not being
engaging enough for the child. The phone is an easy answer for entertainment.
The child's vocabulary isn't sufficient to express "Damn, y'all are boring me
to death here! I need my mind fed, people!" any way other than asking to "see"
the phone.

Solution: Find other ways to be adequately interesting to your toddler. A two
year old has substantial need for intellectual inputs. Make sure the phone is
not the only non-boring option available to them.

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jlengrand
For us, it's a few simple rules.

* Some TV only in the weekend (Tintin, Smurfs) and with daddy or mummy. It's a bit like Sunday cuddle time. One episode max. (about 30 minutes). * She is not allowed to grab the phone and 'scroll' herself. She can see photos about her that we send or receive. That's maybe 5 times a day. * She is allowed to grab the phone to use it as a phone (speak to family members).

The hardest, and what I am bad at, is to grab the phone myself when with her.
For example scrolling Twitter while I feed her. I have to get better at that.

Occasionally, she might get a few hours of Tintin where we travel by car to
France. The following days, seeing her constantly nagging for more TV reminds
us how addictive that is, and how careful we have to be.

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croo
IMO a two year old needs exactly zero screen time. For them the world is never
a boring place.

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mrfusion
I’d do a half hour maybe three times a month just so they can learn the
mechanics and get some experience thinking a bit more abstractly. A few hours
couldn’t hurt unless it turns into a gateway drug ...

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mrfusion
I limit mindless screentime and games to one day a week.

A daily limit just led to daily battles.

But as they get older I allow anything productive almost unlimited. Eg playing
around on sketchup, writing stories in a word processor, making “reports” in
PowerPoint.

Oh and ted talks are also unlimited.

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amerkhalid
I got 15 months old, he loves music videos (Baby Shark is theme music of my
life right now). Right now, he is easy to distract, so if he get on phone or
TV, we will redirect him to play. We also try never to be on phone in front of
him. I read on Kindle but he gets bored with Kindle quickly.

I am not sure what will happen when his attention span increases and start
demanding for us to turn on TV.

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uptownfunk
This became a bit of a long spiel and is quite anecdotal, ymmv, but in the
spirit of trying to help a fellow parent I thought I’d share my thoughts and
experiences.

Our son is right around the same age. I was super addicted to tv as a kid and
I really don’t want our kids anywhere near one. My wife specializes in early
childhood education so I usually (have to) run my crazy child rearing ideas
before her before it gets ratified.

In any case we don’t have a cable subscription. We have Netflix/amzn prime but
we make it a point not to turn the tv on around the kids. We only really watch
it once the kids are down. I personally feel that when you’re watching tv your
brain is shut off, you’re getting the dopamine hit (which I think is similar
to the Facebook/insta likes etc). And I have some intuitive feeling that this
probably isn’t the best for childhood development.

We have a small place, so our living room is full of kid stuff. Educational
toys, books and all that. We got our 2 yo into reading and he has his kiddo
sized bookshelf so when he wants to read he chooses his books and brings them
to us and we read.

When we read we don’t just read the text, but we really try to examine the
pictures as much as we can, I try to make it as interactive for him as
possible, I learned that one from the wife.

He has a ton of toys my wife has chosen based on her experience, we tend to
avoid too many electronic toys with lots of overstimulating lights and sounds
(besides those get annoying really quick).

One thing that has really helped is music. We have tons of kid sized indian
and western musical instruments as well, part of it is because music wasn’t
emphasized at home (only math and science, that is a whole other discussion,
but a very damaging attitude to have in the home i think as well). We also
play music, but shut off the screens. So we will cast YouTube or Spotify to
our tv but shut off the screen. It’s a little scary to see how quickly their
eyes glaze over once the visuals come on.

I really think songs and singing along is such a great way to build up
vocabulary skills in kids, as well as helping them develop their musical
sensibilities.

We also live in Southern California, the favorable weather makes it very easy
to go to the beach any chance we get, or I’ll just take him outdoors and let
him explore and play.

This is all probably a long way of saying what another commenter was getting
at. Have a lot of other entertaining activities at home so that the tv becomes
insignificant or ideally just a worse option from the kiddos POV than more
wholesome activities.

Also I always love recommending The Beginning of Life on Netflix, it
emphasizes Reggio Emilia, and has an eye opening take on child development
that engineers or technically oriented people may not have at first grasp.

