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> at what cost to the future growth of the kid? Does there need to be a cost? From my experience, it's just like most activities you do with your children. Yo

> at what cost to the future growth of the kid? Does there need to be a cost? From my experience, it's just like most activities you do with your children. You can use it as babysitter or you can use it as a learning tool by participating and engaging with your child. Here's how I've done it and he's doing great: - We mostly use the tablet together, especially when we try a new app. - I avoid the crack-head apps. The ones with bells, whistles, popups, and other toxic rewards for simple actives. It's fine to rewards like that for something challenging. - We talk about what he's doing. For example, why he chooses certain colors or why he likes the features. Anything to start a conversation. - Moderation. 15-30 minutes once every few days. - Reference what he learned from the app during real-life activities. For example, one app he likes is a virtual dog washing app. He uses soap, a brush, water, etc. When we're playing together, we pretend to clean his stuffed animals just like he did in the app.

ksdale 6y ago
Anecdotally, we don't exactly practice moderation with screen time, and we've been constantly surprised at how much our kids learn from even the crappy alphabet/number/animals/shapes videos on YouTube Kids. We're also not big into milestones, but our kids have absolutely flown past every educational milestone for their ages. We are very present, attentive parents with above average education, but we spend (what we think is) an unexceptional amount of time teaching them things, and they have learned an exceptional amount. What's funny is that everyone just assumes the screen time is bad, and that our kids are naturally very smart (with the implicit suggestion that they'd know more without screen time). That may be true, but it isn't borne out by observation in our case. We've found a lot of parenting is like that - people are pretty sure about what's good and bad, and the child's behavior/response one way or the other is either expected or a fluke, depending on what confirms assumptions about what's good and bad. Our oldest is only 7, but we have 4 and we've noticed no ill effects from screen time, the kids are all social, they love to go to the park and play with friends (which we don't get to do nearly enough now...), to go for walks and ride bikes, in short they all seem well within the bounds of "normal" development for their ages.

ksdale 6y ago

Anecdotally, we don't exactly practice moderation with screen time, and we've been constantly surprised at how much our kids learn from even the crappy alphabet/number/animals/shapes videos on YouTube Kids. We're also not big into milestones, but our kids have absolutely flown past every educational milestone for their ages. We are very present, attentive parents with above average education, but we spend (what we think is) an unexceptional amount of time teaching them things, and they have learned an exceptional amount. What's funny is that everyone just assumes the screen time is bad, and that our kids are naturally very smart (with the implicit suggestion that they'd know more without screen time). That may be true, but it isn't borne out by observation in our case. We've found a lot of parenting is like that - people are pretty sure about what's good and bad, and the child's behavior/response one way or the other is either expected or a fluke, depending on what confirms assumptions about what's good and bad. Our oldest is only 7, but we have 4 and we've noticed no ill effects from screen time, the kids are all social, they love to go to the park and play with friends (which we don't get to do nearly enough now...), to go for walks and ride bikes, in short they all seem well within the bounds of "normal" development for their ages.