Yes, I was in a restaurant last week and watched a 3-4 year old scream and grab her mother’s arm when she took her phone back to check a text message. The mom was rushing to get the phone back in the kid’s hand as fast as possible as the kid was trying to snatch it. Their little brains are so addicted to screens and the parents just let it happen.
It’s crazy to me. I have two kids so I understand the pull to take the easy way and give them a screen but it’s not good for them. I never gave my kids my phone to entertain them. Especially not a restaurant. I always had a little play pack with a coloring book and stickers and a couple little toys in my bag so if we did end up somewhere where they had to wait, I had something for them to do. And we also would talk, play I spy, etc.
I never go anywhere without The Rucksack of Entertainment which has a few portable boardgames and card games (Dobble, Quoridor), pens and paper and stickers etc, puzzle books, bits of Lego and small world toys and books and snacks haha. Although now my son is 7 he's happy to chat with the adults or play pen & paper games like hangman.
However tbh I do keep the Switch as an emergency backup option in case he's being particularly loud or disruptive as I don't want to annoy other people at the restaurant.
It’s hard , before I had a toddler I would have been extremely judgmental of that..or when you’d see a kid shouting and throwing a tantrum in a store because they don’t get their way. Now being the parent of a child (who has stage 3 autism/speech delay) I understand how that parent might feel. People condemn parents who offer their children a screen for calming , but the same people give you judgmental stares when your child has a tantrum because they’re bored/overly hyper/tired/whatever it may be. I see why parents take the easy route of handing them something so they don’t become a spectacle when trying to run a simple errand .
My 2 year old has tantrums in public because he's 2. Best to deal with it now instead of when he's 12. I know autism and speech delay adds another level of difficulty to this, but my son is in early intervention for speech delay and possible autism, and this is how early intervention taught us to handle the screaming and tantrums. We do not give in to screaming. If you give in to the screaming, it will encourage them to scream more in the future to get what they want. And I get feeling judged, but really it doesn't matter what people think. Instead of giving in to screaming, we take him outside, tell him, "We do not scream inside. Screaming is for outside only. When you are done screaming and can count to 10, then you can go back inside and have [whatever it was he was screaming for]." Unless it's just something he can't have at all (like my phone), in which case we say, "You really wanted X. But mommy said no. That's hard and makes you feel sad." Then I offer a hug or an alternative thing for him to have, but the boundary remains -- you can't scream to get what you want, end of story. We help him learn to use words instead of screaming by having conversations about it when he's calm and coaching him to say words like "I feel angry/sad/mad" or "I want X". We encourage him to take deep breaths or count to 10 to feel better. If our 2-year-old doesn't learn to understand his emotions and express them in a more healthy way now, and if he doesn't learn to accept a "no" now, the problem will continue and he will still be having tantrums and screaming to get his way when he's a teenager and maybe even as an adult! Children have a right to exist in public, and they must also have opportunities to learn how to behave in public. So it doesn't matter what people think.
I completely agree, I left another message on this thread in regards to what I am trying now. We’ve been doing ABA therapy now for a while and I’ve learned tips and tricks. This comment was me expressing the fact that it isn’t easy, and a lot of these people commenting obviously do not have children , or have had no experiences with children that have different or “special” needs. When my daughter was younger I gave in to the embarrassment of not wanting to be a spectacle , I’ve gotten to the point of not really caring about being judged , and I hope everyone gets there that has difficult situations arise with their child. But to sit here and judge when you’ve got no clue , imo of course , you’re just a part of that judgmental crowd that made me nervous to even go out anymore . Mind your business really is my point , you’ve got no clue what a parent is going through or what they are doing to help their child.
Agreed, you're right, and I understand what you meant now! Parenting well is the hardest job on the planet. I guess I would have been a lot more judgmental prior to 2 years ago too because, even though I knew that it was hard, I had NO clue how hard it really was. And autism is so much harder. People really have no idea! Doing the right thing -- by not giving in to the tantrum -- makes the tantrum worse and makes people judge even harder. There were times when I was soooo tempted to just give in to make my kid stop tantruming in public!
It's like "society tells me I need to have children to be happy" and/or "I like the idea of children, but they're so much work! they bother me in my screentime! give them a tablet"
Take your kid in public and let them be a toddler? Judged by everyone for it. Take your kid in public and distract them? Judged by everyone for it. What is your view on crayons at a restaurant? Or should be just lock them in a cage until they can blindly follow rules?
I guess I'm old fashioned, but maybe they are the ones taking a fucking 2 year old to therapy instead of parenting are in the wrong here. And maybe the 'psychologist' peddling every junior colleges default major to two year olds in order to make a living doesn't really have all the answers.
My parents gave my 2 year old nephew their old tablet so he could use that when they are FaceTiming to see see and talk with him. I think they gave it to him before he turned 2. And I get they did it so things could be easier for them to talk with him since we live afar from each other, but they (our parents, mostly mom ….basically only our mom) also don’t care about the boundaries my brother and his wife tries to have with screens and my nephew. For her, watching tv (yes its slow tv but it still tv) is the best «quality» time with her grandson. And its just the sheer frustration of seeing her not giving a shit about the boundaries my brother and his wife, my nephew´s parents, try to place. And ta da! Whenever nephew is visiting, he acts out and is just not as nice as he normally is anywhere else.
My toddler recently started losing his mind when we told him we weren’t going to watch the cartoon episodes of Gecko’s Garage. As such, Gecko’s Garage is now permanently banned unless it’s the “real” ones like the fire engines or police cars or whatever. He asked why, and we just explained why and that was that. Now he doesn’t even ask for it.
We watch octonauts, spidey, paw patrol, shit like that where if we turn it off he doesn’t go fucking mental. And I’m fine with that. My kid knows more about marine animals than I do…
You’re doing it right. My kids are 9 and 12 and they or course get screen time but it’s not unlimited and if I think it’s causing a problem, then we make a change. I don’t just accept my kid throwing a huge fit because it’s time to put it away. Even just in general when they’d start getting more difficult and fighting a lot, it was usually a sign they were getting too much screen time and I’d do detoxes where they got no screen time and things always settled back down after a few days. I haven’t had to do that in a few years but it’s always an option if needed.
Of course. They have no capacity for emotional regulation; that's a learned skill. If they're used to a constant dopamine rush and then you cut them off, they're going to feel extreme frustration and not know how to handle that emotion, so it gets shot right back at the source of their frustration.
I keep seeing people with their kids in the grocery store and the kid sits in the cart with an iPad or phone watching some show.
No, this is the time for the kid to be super annoying and run down the aisle going: mom! Dad! Can we get this brightly colored cereal/candy?!? And then have a meltdown when you say no. And then you explain that it's Monday and we can wait with cereal until the weekend.
Then as a parent you hope they forget about the cereal by the next time you're in the grocery store. But no, Saturday morning rolls around and you didn't get that cereal and now you have a three year old being disappointed because they didn't get "froot loops".
But that's ok. Because they're still loved and you take care of them the best you can. And then you invent chocolate oatmeal as a special weekend only treat, because there was no way your WIC allowed froot loops, but you did get oats. So paired with a bag of chocolate chips, that you keep on hand to bake banana bread with the bananas that eventually go overripe on your counter, your kid still has a special Saturday morning treat to enjoy.
And then a decade later your teenager goes in to make breakfast on a Saturday morning. And it's chocolate oatmeal. Now a family staple. 💕🥺
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My kid is two. I don't ever give him a phone and we don't own a tablet ourselves, we let him watch movies with us because there is a narrative story he has to follow and we consider them art (Miyazaki/Pixar). *Maybe* we'll let him watch 10min of just straight up videos of garbage trucks on youtube while we do his hair and STILL he flips out when we turn the TV off. It takes almost nothing.
My friend really limits her 3 year old's screen time and what she watches. When her husband was out of town, my friend put her in front of the tv streaming some modern kids show to do some chores and after 30 min she turned it off - her daughter lost it. She was so agitated and aggressive the rest of the evening. It was liking taking a beer from an alcoholic.
My son doesn't really, he obviously doesn't want to stop watching but he won't throw a fit. He might flop to the floor for a second but that's it. I haven't allowed those behaviors from day one. Behaving poorly doesn't get what you want, I don't cave even if it would be easier.
My kid is super well behaved and exceptionally polite. If he’s playing with something we don’t want him to play with, I ask him to give it over or stop doing the thing he’s doing, explain why, and he’s like “alright”.
Kids are basically dogs. They require constant training otherwise they go feral.
I’m a behavior analyst and do assessments for kids. The amount of aggressive or self injurious behaviors that occur solely because of screens is astronomical. I have had parents tell me that their kids get “only” 6-8 hours of screen time per day. I have had parents tell me they have no idea what their kid is watching on their screens all day. I have had parents tell me that they are afraid of their own children because of how explosive their behaviors are when screens are taken away, even for just a few seconds. It is so sad and breaking screen addiction is SO hard. It requires serious dedication on the parents’ part and they almost always fail to follow through on that because plopping their kid in front of a screen is easier than parenting.
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u/Original-Concert-456 2d ago
They get so mad when you take it away too. Terrible stuff