Toddler is Elmo/screen obsessed
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Anonymous
Oh c'mon. Give it a rest, troll. |
Anonymous
OP - so normal! Our household obsession is SuperWhy but Mickey Mouse is a close second. And with about 3 minutes of exposure that I'm aware of they also seem to know who Dora, Curious George and Caillou are. I don't get it. 
I try to limit access and not make it guaranteed. I don't use it at every meal time or every bedtime or every anything - only intermittently - so they can't establish a pattern. That helps a lot actually. And I have a couple of things that I've let them become familiar with - the one TV show, one ipad game, one leapgrog electronic thing that they love. So any of those can fill the role of buying me a few minutes of peace and seeming like a big treat - but no one thing becomes the established screamed for item. That has helped a bit. But mostly I think you just have to balance the big picture with the daily needs. Kind of like looking at their diet intake over the course of a week, rather than at every individual meal. (That's a mindset that has helped me calm down a bit about worrying about veggie/fruit/protein balances. It helps me think about screen time also.) |
Anonymous
| Worst mistake we ever made was downloading the "Elmo Calls" app, which is basically Facetime with Elmo. DD wants to see it every time she sees my phone. |
Anonymous
What is it about Elmo? I find the fascination so interesting. |
Anonymous
Oh, God. My 18 mo old saw 2 minutes of this once and now is OBSESSED. What is it with that monkey? We limit this, obviously, since he is only 18 mos--he needs, like, 5 minutes a day and he's happy. But WTH with this monkey? He loves it. |
Anonymous
| ^^ My DS loves George. I admit, it's a pretty cute show and it's one of the few I can tolerate. One good thing is that DS now likes reading the Curious George books too. |
Anonymous
| OP, our son was the same way around that age, got manic with any screen time and then just begged for whatever it was all the time. We just stopped letting him use it and the begging trailed off and he forgot about it. Yes, he will see Elmo and you can play music, read books, whatever. But for some kids there definitely is a particular type of obsession with the TV/phone/iPad that makes them act crazy and it just wasn't worth it for us. We paid for the 15 minutes of peace and quiet each time with much more wailing and whining than we were willing to put up with. |
Anonymous
I agree. For us it went: 1-2.5 years - Elmo 2.5 - 3 - Yo Gabba Gabba 3-3.5 - Princesses She's now 3.5 and seems to have more or less gotten over the Princess thing and it doesn't seem to have been replaced by anything in particular. I don't know where Elmo came from, honestly. I didn't give her videos to watch. We didn't have any Elmo toys (at first). The only thing I could think of was the diapers. The Pampers she was wearing had Sesame Street on the front of them. Other than that, daycare, though they didn't watch shows there either and the kids were young enough that they weren't super verbal about their obsessions. She now every once in a while will mention Elmo or Gabba, but not obsessively like before. |
Anonymous
Curious George is a toddler sized nonverbal monkey who can fly a rocketship, ride a cow, flood the house, build a beaver dam, go shopping on his own, cook in a restaurant, wash windows on a skyscraper, assemble a dinosaur from fossilized bones, you name it. He can do anything and toddlers live vicariously through this. Also he destroys almost everything he touches but somehow manages to fix it by the end of the episode. It's a pretty good little show. |
Anonymous
I love the disclaimer "George is a monkey and can do things you can't" |
Anonymous
Well, I haven't stabbed anyone yet and I watched plenty of TV as a small child. Although I admit that someone as pathetically pretentious and embarrassingly simple-minded as you makes me feel a bit stabby! |