Anonymous wrote:I watched Netflix and baseball constantly when my kid was an infant.
When she was big enough to actually notice the TV, I was more cautious, but still plenty of baseball in the evening, plus the occasional movie on a sick day, and plenty of 5-10 videos to entertain her while I got dressed or prepared a meal or went to the bathroom.
She started watching full episodes of Sesame Street at 18 months.
At 2, she got 30-60 minutes of TV probably 3-4 days a week -- Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger, Doc McStuffins.
At 2.5, we went through a brief period where she watched hours of tv a day for a few weeks because of a death in the family, including some garbage Disney shows that I would not normally touch with a 10 foot pole.
At 3, she now watches a few hours a week.
She just started reading on her own -- just simple words that she can put together with her letter magnets on the fridge. She knows all her letters and their sounds and knows numbers to 15 and can even do very simple math (3 apples minus 1 apple is 2 apples). She loves to talk, is social, and has great emotional control for a 3 year old -- meltdowns occasionally, but can identify her feelings and express them and has a few coping skills that she can initiate on her own.
Also, she has a mother who, with limited childcare and no help from family, has stayed sane and healthy for 3 years of both SAH and WAH, the most recent 6 months in a pandemic.
Good god, the screen time thing. Just don't plant them in front of the television for hours at a time as a stand in for actual parenting. And even as you do, as we did for three weeks earlier this year, it's okay as long as you keep talking to them and paying attention to them and course correct when you can.
(My kid has also eaten McDonald's french fries on dozens of occasions. Normal height and weight, eats vegetables and other healthy food, it's fine, my god, please stop with this stuff.)
So, you’re answer to the post is “no”. Would it really have been that hard just to type “no”?