Watching TV With Toddlers

“Screen time is bad for young children, study says”

Just another headline telling me how bad of a job I’m doing keeping my daughter occupied during the pandemic.  I’m not sure how these scientists expect me to avoid screen time when I have no support systems and still have to eat and go to the bathroom at some point.

On top of that, my daughter has a sensory processing disorder that makes it impossible to survive a day without any TV at all.  She needs more stimulation than we can reasonably provide given the circumstances, but some days every minute of TV still fills me with guilt. 

Before the pandemic I never imagined my daughter would watch any TV at all until she was 5.  Boy was I wrong.  She watches movies, Sesame Street, and Youtube videos now.  

For a long time, I was concerned the TV would stunt her intellectual growth.  After almost a year of pandemic life, I can tell you that isn’t the case.  She is doing really well with her goals and growth, which I attribute to how we watch TV.

TV is just a tool

And like any tool, how you use it determines the results.  

The reason TV is considered so bad for young children and their development is because of how children learn.  Learning is not a passive activity, it happens best through play.

TV is often a passive activity.  If the child is dumped in front of the TV and left to zone out, of course TV is going to get in the way of play and stunt progress.  But TV is still a really useful tool for learning with children of every age.  

Here is how we use TV in our home as a teaching tool.

Keep it low and dim

Our TV is kept very quiet.  Often I have to strain to hear conversations, but the songs come through relatively clear.  We also set the brightness to 0, making it a little more difficult to see in the daytime.

The TV is about adding visual and auditory stimulus, we don’t want her to just sit and zone out on it.  By keeping the volume and brightness low, it encourages our daughter to focus on it when she needs to recharge and then dart off and play when she no longer needs the extra stimulus.

Subtitles are your friend

My 2-year-old knows a lot of her letters and has started picking out sight words, all because we put the subtitles on everything. 

She memorizes the dialogues of a movie or favorite episode of a show and then has us replay it over and over again so she can look at the subtitles while she matches the dialogue.  It is truly fascinating to watch, though it does mean I have seen Mulan 10 times in the past 3 days.  

It also means she can read words like “Dory” and “puppy” without any context at all.  

We put subtitles on everything, and she soaks them up like a sponge.

Watch in multiple languages

We are a multilingual family.  Our daughter has to learn German and Portuguese, and is also picking up a little Japanese because I am learning it. 

We watch and listen to media in all kinds of languages.  Music in Japanese, Sesame Street in German, Portuguese books on tape.  Movies she has memorized in English we switch to another language.

Hearing the languages spoken out loud helps tune her ear, and does an amazing job expanding her vocabulary.

Add toys

Some days our daughter is having so much trouble regulating we know she will spend all day in front of the TV.

We only have one TV in the house and it is not in the playroom.  So on those days, we set up the living room with toys.  Her rocking horse lives in the living room, and we bring blocks and whatever activities she has been really working on mastering into the living room.  

I typically set the toys and activities up in a semicircle around her on the carpet.  She will really focus on the TV for a little while and then play with the blocks or work on an activity without taking her eyes from the movie.  

It isn’t the best solution, but she keeps moving and it works well on days when she hasn’t slept or is struggling.

Use youtube like living flashcards

We are horrible people who don’t always manage to eat dinner at the dining room table.  I know!  Horrible.

Sometimes we eat in front of the TV because we are just too exhausted or the baby is in a mood that means she will be sitting on us anyway.  Might as well be comfortable.

So we occasionally eat in front of the TV, and when we do we watch youtube.  The amazing thing about youtube is you can find videos about anything the child is interested in.

Our daughter is going through a “chicken” phase.  She loves identifying chickens, so we look up “chicken fails” or “funny chicken videos” on youtube, then she gets excited identifying the chickens.  While she is doing that, we correct anything that isn’t quite a chicken or has a more specific name that we know.  

If a chicken and her 4 chicks come on the screen, the baby is yelling “chicken” and we will say “Yes! A chicken and her 4 chicks the baby chickens! One, two, three, four chicks!”

She gets to see animals in more diverse locations being themselves, and we get to expand her vocabulary.

Experience new things

People can’t really travel right now, and as a response, many national parks and museums have created online video tours.  

Those tours are amazing for introducing babies to new environments.  

During our “Finding Nemo” phase, we watched every documentary and tour taking place on a reef.  During the “Happy Feet” phase we watched a lot of penguins.  

Documentaries and virtual tours are fantastic ways to explore new environments and expand vocabulary.  

Mimic

I admit this technique is a little harder because you have to be an active participant.  We use this technique on days when we know we are going to be camping in front of the TV.

While watching a documentary, we pretend to be the animals the documentary is currently focusing on.  After a few minutes of feeling incredibly silly, our daughter joins in.  Then we spend an hour or so pretending to be different animals.

It is a fun way to get moving and explore animal sounds and motion.  

Don’t worry so much

Overall, screen time isn’t so bad.  The occasional sitting stationary in front of the TV is not going to prevent your child from getting into college or half their IQ.

We are all doing the very best we can, and our very best happens to involve way more TV than I would like right now.  It took me a long time to get over my mom guilt on this one, but the truth is sometimes we all need to sit down, turn on the TV, and unwind.

However much TV your family is watching right now, just know your sanity is more important than some scientific study that took place in a bubble.  

Take care of  yourselves, and if you ever need to talk, drop me a line.  I’m here.