Television

"No screen time before 2."

I read this recommendation from the American Pediatric Association so many times by the time my daughter was born that it seemed like common sense.  I hadn't really thought about it before, but after all the articles, studies, and research that were virtually flying at my pregnant face, I had integrated the information into my own view of parenting even before I became an actual parent.

Sure, while she was a newborn and slept for hours on end (and breastfed for hours on end) I would watch marathons of Real Housewives of Wherever and take on new shows I had heard rave reviews about, but by the time she was old enough to turn her head to see the television screen, I had learned to prop her in one arm while she slept and hold a paperback book in the other.

I never have the television on when Celaya is awake.  I can be in the middle of a steamy episode of Scandal during her nap, and if she wakes up early for any reason, I click the TV off, and resume my TV free day with my tiny toddler.

However....

Screen time applies to all screens, it would seem.  And in this particular area I am definitely guilty.  The APA says no screen time because of how rapidly babies brains are growing and developing before the age of 2.  Not even my iPhone videos.  The existing evidence shows that time spent in front of a screen slows and/or interferes with those developmental stages.

But I love my morning time lazing about in bed, especially because I tend to be awake later on work nights; I don't even get home until ten thirty.  So I started showing Celaya videos of herself on my iPhone, learning to walk, running, singing, splashing in puddles with her cousin, and she loved them.  She soon got into the habit of asking for the videos as soon as she got into bed with me in the morning: "baby.  baby.  baby," she would demand until I turned on the videos.

In the last couple of weeks I have noticed her becoming less interested in these videos, so I decided, what the heck, she's 20 months old, almost 2, I'll find some of those Baby Einstein videos I keep hearing about.

Sure enough, I found one called "Discovering Shapes." It essentially shows a drawing of a shape, a voice then says the name of the shape, "circle," and a series of images of those shapes in the real world are shown in a calm, slow, manner, to background music typical of a crib mobile, soft, gentle instrumental tunes.  Celaya took to this video quickly, shouting out all of the images she saw, "watermelon!  egg!  oval!" and if I'm not right there with her to at least repeat back, "yea, baby, that's an egg," or explain, "no, honey, that's not a square, it's a rectangle.  Oh look, there's a graham cracker," (heaven forbid I leave her side to go the bathroom) she quickly becomes bored and wanders away from my phone, or starts pressing buttons and ends up pocket calling her grandma or her babysitter.

Then, my husband got involved.  This weekend, he decided to look up nursery rhymes on youtube and they sat for several minutes while I did dishes in the kitchen, and I could hear "itsy bitsy spider" playing over and over again from the living room.  Of course I thought it was cute.  That is until I saw the video this morning in bed with her, and I saw the look on her face while she watched it.

With the Baby Einstein video she engages, interacts, talks to me about what she's seeing, wanders away and comes back.  With the nursery rhymes cartoon she stares blankly at the screen, transfixed, in a daze.  She doesn't talk, she certainly can't keep up with the rapid pacing of the songs, and she simply says at the end, "again."

Needless to say, I have to find a way to get my husband to stop the cartoons.  (Carlos, are you reading this?)

Cartoons.  Animation.

This seems to be the major problem with screen time period, the animation effect.  According to the studies that have been coming out for the last decade, the rapid pace of the images changing on the screen, especially in animated features and videos games, rewires something in babies' brains and leads them to expect that type of rapid pacing in the real world, which, as we all know, usually functions at an incredibly slow pace.  They become impatient with the real world and turn back to TV or video games, which only feeds the need for rapidity even more, and the vicious cycle continues.

I do accept that I am going to have to set limits at some point on even Baby Einstein as my child becomes more engaged and more demanding.  The average child today apparently engages a screen of some sort, iPhone, iPad, video game, television, computer, for entertainment purposes for 8 hours a day.  I worry about my kid going over 30 minutes.  I certainly don't want to get to 8 hours.

But more than how long my child watches the screen, I do worry about what it is she is watching, who she is watching it with (as in alone or with someone to discuss what she is watching), and whether what she watches can then be connected to the real world.

If she watches Baby Einstein and learns about squares, we can point out squares throughout the rest of our day together.

If she watches cartoons with overly bright, loud, fast talking and singing cartoon characters, what can we point out?  What is there to talk about?

I already sing the ABCs, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Star, and other nursery songs to her throughout our day, and we work on them together; she sings along with me or repeats after me.  If she watches these crazy cartoons doing these same things, will she become bored with my version?  Will she demand I do it their way?  Will she come to prefer cartoons to mama-as-entertainment?

Let's hope not.

After all, I do a damn good Little Teapot.