The point of this blog post is not to convince anyone that our choice is better or worse than anyone else’s choice, it is just to share our journey and support anyone else who may want to go this route and let them know that yes, it is possible to do this.
My husband and I are not unfamiliar with the experience of saying I am going to do something as a parent when I was pregnant and having people scoff or dismiss our plans. Very few people were outwardly supportive of our strict Babywise plan from the beginning, but most came on board after seeing the results. After all, our now 2-yo has slept through the night every night since she was 7 weeks old.
What I have found is that often times if someone else wished they had a goal or stuck to it but didn’t, they like to project that on others. So, when my
husband and I said we would have zero screen time for our daughter until she was 2, we were essentially met with laughter versus support. “Oh just wait,” “yah we thought that too,” “oh that’s what every new parent says,” were a few of the responses on repeat.
When we did continue to succeed in our choice, others became almost
defensive of their different decisions, as if, by our choice to avoid
screens, I was damning their choice to use them. It really felt
uncomfortable sometimes, almost as if I was constantly having to tell people that I was not judging them, I was just stating what we were doing.
Why we chose to do this
So why did we say no screen time? Well like most parents, before having our daughter we did a significant amount of reading and learning about having a child and child development. We also just looked around us to see and learn from what others were doing. One thing that we came across consistently was that screen time at an early age does more harm than good and the Academy of Pediatrics has said for years that they do not recommend any screen time other than Face-time for kids under 2.
It is really as simple as that. Everything I read and observed made us
realize we did not want to have Galia around screens, so we said we weren’t
going to. As I mentioned at the beginning, the point of this blog post is
not to convince anyone that our choice is better or worse than anyone else’s
choice, the point is to support anyone else who may want to go this route
and let them know that yes, it is possible to do this.
How to avoid Screen time
Commit
The absolute most important thing is your own commitment to the choice.
There are 100% going to be times where you just need your baby/toddler to be distracted by something else so you have a second to do something, or you are exhausted and don’t really want to interact, you just want to watch tv yourself. Find something else. Make sure you have enough books and engaging toys to keep your child occupied. Galia was happy as a clam to sit on the floor with her books if I needed to go to the bathroom. Go for a walk.
Sometimes when I was too exhausted to chase her around I would throw her in the stroller/bike stroller and just go outside and walk. If kids don’t know that screen time exists, they don’t miss it. Ultimately it’s your own mental exercise in commitment though.
Speak up
Don’t be afraid to let those around you know that you are not exposing your
child to screen time in order to prevent them from turning on the
television. You’ll start to realize how often people put on tv just as
background noise but don’t really need it. We avoided any sort of event that
was centered around television, luckily there weren’t many and when she was younger it was easy. Almost every time I mentioned it to friends if we were over at their houses, they were more than happy to turn the TV off or keep it turned off. The few times that the TV was not able to be turned off leads me to the next option.
Leave
Sometimes we just had to leave the room and go play elsewhere to avoid the television. Extreme? Maybe. But it was essential to my own commitment that I didn’t go down a perceived slippery slope in my own mind.
Ultimately it just about making it a habit. Something that I kept telling
myself was that our parents and grandparents did not have to deal with
screens, they just did not have them and they were able to manage just fine,
so it wasn’t something necessary to get things done.
Be Prepared
As important as it was to us to eliminate screen time, I was also realistic
and prepared. We had several long flights and drives where I had emergency movies downloaded onto my phone…just in case. One day we were traveling in airports for almost 24 hours to include sleeping on a bench in the terminal and I still never felt like I needed to pull out the movies. The toys, snacks, and walking were distraction enough for her. I was exhausted but I was still committed.
As much as I may have wanted couch cuddles while watching a movie with her some nights, I knew that 2 years in the long run is not a big deal and
would go fast. And it did.
Introducing Screen Time after 2
After being so strict, I was a little concerned about how we would
transition to incorporating screen time. The AAP, which we use as our
guideline suggests 1 hour or less for ages 2-5. Part of me wasn’t sure if
once we watched TV if I would constantly be turning it on but so far, six
months after she has turned 2, we still don’t show her screens most of
the time. In preparation for our trip to Disney we started watching some of the classics, breaking them down into 2-3 days to finish a whole movie (she has seen a total of 4 movies now). Most times she asks to turn it off and read a book after 20 minutes. I attribute that to the last couple years. She is more aware of it and we will show her photos and old videos of herself on our phones (she loves to watch “Galia swimming”) but I am still a bit hawkish about monitoring any time at all. We have about 4 x minute long educational song/videos saved on our phones in the event of toddler emergencies but more often than not forget about those too.
I am grateful we were able to make our goal of 2 years and that our family
was able to support us in this. As I mentioned before, my sole purpose of
this post is to let other new parents know that it IS possible IF that is
what they choose to do. There is a lot of weird judgement around parents
making this choice that I don’t understand but if this is something you want
to choose, you are TOTALLY CAPABLE of it!
Xx
Kali