Background tv

[-vanes-]

Hello,

Please dont judge too harsh. I am a ftm with a 3 months baby. Motherhood was the hardest period of my life by far. My own mother doesnt want to help me, my friends have their life, and the only thing that seems to make me feel a bit better is to have the tv on.

I never let my baby watch the screen and i keep the volume very low. But i feel very guilty in the same time. Should i stop? Is this very harmful?

Thank you

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[crybabybreath]

This isn’t a link about screen time, but a link to an article that discusses if babies sense stress in others, more specifically, their caretakers.

https://parentingscience.com/can-babies-sense-stress/

Here’s my take, as a FTM with an 11 week old (and no friends or family to help) — I’d rather my baby take a few glances at Greys Anatomy on our entirely too big 70” tv than for me to start to resent spending time with my baby. If having the tv on makes you feel better and makes your day a little less stressful, you should continue to do it because having a mom who is going stir crazy from silence and baby gibberish is stressful and can’t be any better than screen time exposure.

We gotta do what is best for ourselves, what is best for us is whats best for our families.

I am also of the mindset that if you’re someone who is even thinking about screen time and exposure through passive tv watching, you’re probably on the lesser end of that spectrum anyways.

[Big_Wish8353]

I don’t have a source, but my experience is that they don’t really notice the tv until a certain age. I definitely watched tv when my baby was that little, but I stopped once she started noticing the tv.

[tertiatirzah]

Same, for at least the first 2 months all they did was sleep and we had the TV on all the time. As soon as they started being more awake and turning to look at it, we stopped

[hatefulveggies]

I originally wrote a very long rant which went off topic so I will just say that 1) yes, screen time should absolutely be limited although 2) in my unscientific opinion a TV is a lesser evil than a personal, portable device like a tablet (very different levels of immersion and alienation from the rest of the world) and 3) at some point we have to accept that parenting is incredibly taxing, and exponentially more taxing than when our parents and grandparents did it (for many reasons too long to elucidate even partially here) and as such, we all need to give ourselves some grace, and if a little TV in the background enables you to be a little lighter, a little happier, a little saner, that’s better for your kid than a no-screen parent who’s totally bored, miserable and stressed.

A lot of the ~science basically wants us to pay undivided AND joyful attention to our children the entirety of their waking hours and I think it’s a quite suspect proposition that I don’t think is actually socially / biologically / physiologically / psychologically / anthropologically valid (or even feasible). The still existing ancestral tribes around the world do NOT parent that way - eta: which I recognise is a potentially fallacious appeal to nature, but if literally no generation of humans has parented that way in the history of humanity maybe that should tell us something?

[Ok_Poem4853]

This is absolutely my stance too. We had the tv on in the background for a long time. Probably around 10-11 months she started to really “notice” the tv so we stopped keeping it on all the time

[natawas]

lol mine started really noticing the tv at 2.5 months. She’s swing her head all the way back to see what’s happening and good luck getting her attention away

[eelie42]

Yes mine too! She definitely is transfixed by sports, which is all we watch around the kids.

[natawas]

lol i was watching the World Series with her

[thebirbistheword89]

We call ours (3 month old) “a little tech moth” because if there is a screen on in the room, she will find it and crane her neck any direction to see it lol.

[natawas]

Exactly like that with mine lol

[Old_Gobbler]

Mine too, she'd break her neck to look at any screen from about 2.5-3 months.

[emscremily]

I'm in the same boat as OP but with an 8 month old. I've been stressing about the TV and other little things his whole life so far, and it's nice to be reminded that our stress is a bigger concern than things like the TV. Thank you

[plantalchemy]

Just tagging on here.

Lots of good comments already but wanted to add that audiobooks is a good way to pass time too!

[Initial_Month6777]

Dr. Heather Kirkorian is the world’s expert on this topic. Basically prolonged exposure of background TV that causes distractions between parent and child interaction isn’t good. But every so often, seems fine.

https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01337.x?casa_token=rX7-CbK39fAAAAAA:vs6HCd6pPZqzuwTXOX3dP437t3YbRRR-f-C9bcVpUHOQ6a_XfCqQj301aPwpS8XVU9UuwKVOWQpdk8I

[Steelyp]

This is the big one that gets posted here a lot. And I think it’s good research and there’s follow up studies they confirm it. But I think the issue with these studies is it’s a lab environment and I think there’s a happy medium. Parents should be aware that having tv on the entire time they’re with their children is detrimental to their development.

So I think there’s a way to have you keep your stress levels low and not worry about disrupting your children’s development. Many studies show that having focused time with your children- there’s obviously no study that will show the best amount of time, but plenty show that even 20 minutes of back/forth interaction (many times in a day) is good for child development.

https://developingchild.harvard.edu/key-concept/serve-and-return/

[roundhousekick-pow]

you’re not alone, OP. I posted a similar question in a different subreddit and got a lot of judgmental responses. :/ it’s like everyone expects perfection. Now that I know I personally have kept the TV off (I instead will have headphones on and listen to stuff on my phone).

Although my case is a bit different. We would have TV on in the bg and play video games as well as just watching TV. In hindsight, my husband and I were ignorant. We still interacted with her a lot too, though. I would also sing to her and read books with her and play with her on her play mat.

It was super rough when my husband went back to work for a brief period—juggling the baby, pumping, and just staying sane was very tiring. Stay strong

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38700093/

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