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Comment by bdavbdav | Hacker News Reader

Have a 5yo daughter.

Day to day, no access to a tablet or whatever. TV time In the mornings at weekends so we can get a bit of sleep (sometimes a bit in the evening at weekend while we cook). No TV through week. If we do watch at other times, it’s all of us watching a movie or Gladiators or whatever together as a group activity.

Flights are the only time for us she gets extended tablet use. A stack of hours in isolation 4-6 times a year isn’t going to do any real harm. Putting babies and toddlers in front of tablet / coco melon on tv for a couple of hours a day all day every day will.

Going a step further, We’ve got friends who let their similar aged child free roam of YouTube. That pushes all kinds of dark things…

Conversely, I get that we have a large house with garden, lots of toys, not great but OK family support, and jobs that aren’t sucking it out of us energy wise. I imagine many have a much tougher time and are in need of respite too.

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Ours is going on 4 - and I’ve gone by the same principles as to how I trained our cats to never beg for food and not get fat - abundance.

She’s allowed to watch YouTube kids or Netflix whenever she wants, or to play Minecraft or Mario or whatever on the switch.

The upshot is that there’s no desperation, no begging, and self-moderation of consumption. She’ll watch a video about planetary formation for 20 minutes, or a Minecraft tutorial, and then she’s bored of that, off to go make art, or play outside, or have a tea party, whatever.

One rule that’s cast iron is never at the table - we go out for dinner, she’s bored and shitkicking, she gets a pen and paper. She reads, she writes, does arithmetic, and she’s empathetic and inquisitive. Couldn’t ask for more.

Once in a while she’ll decide that today she wants to lounge on the sofa and binge on Bluey, and that’s fine - it’s never a permanent state of being.

She will be 4.

THe media she consumes is designed by adults to make it addictive.

She can't controll it, you can.

This is a shitty shitty advice. It might work for you right now, it might work due to her surroundings right now but man wtf.

Got kids, have you?

I literally said above that she has developed excellent self control and a take-it-or-leave it attitude.

Her surroundings right now? What do you know about them?

Anyway. I wasn’t even giving advice, I was just saying what worked for me and her.

You seem to have signed up to HN to pick fights and piss people off, looking at your comments.

Someone, flag this dweeb.

I'm the dweeb? Because I bring up arguments you could argue against?

As I brought it up in my point I made: Social Media was made by adults to be addictive.

Alone the fact, that you think that a 4 year old should be able to "binge on Bluey" is borderline.

Good for you if it works, but don't be pissed when others chime in.

And i'm commenting for the same reasons as you do: for discussions and sharing opinions. Go ahead tell me why my comments are bad. I'm not picking any fights and i'm not pissing at people, i ARGUE. For Disucssions sake.

Do you really think my comment to your parenting will affect your parenting? no.

She's 4, she won't be 4 or like this the rest of her life or even the next few years as she starts going to school and the like.

I can't predict what will happen to your kid specifically because everyone's different; I hope for her sake she won't change this behaviour, but I'm fairly sure in a few years you'll think back on this time.

(ours is 18, attention span and emotional regulation are shot and he's not even the worst of his generation)

I think that all your data proves, with 100% certainty, is that you can't extrapolate from a sample size of 1.

It is very clear for many children that allowing them to gorge themselves on TV (or whatever) will not result in them self regulating.

YMMV.

The abundance technique wouldn’t work so well with my Labrador…..

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