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I'm rising 3 kids (in France, I don't know if it changes much). We have banned TV, very heavily restricted phones, and we closely follow homework. I'm persuaded it makes a difference wrt parents that don't do that, but somehow isn't a sure fire way of being a "great parent".

We're in Canada; doing the same. But most of my kids' classmates are on YouTube all the time. The brainrot content is unavoidable and it's creating issues for my kids' socialization.

My parents didn't get me a nintendo when I was a child. My socialization also suffered, but I ended up with a job making AAA games and they did not so I consider it a fair trade now that I'm older.

I don't know how that helps. Watching TV with my kid has been the best way to teach him I've found. There are great videos and shows that you can watch together and then discuss afterwords. Baking videos. Chemistry. Physics. History. Seeing something on TV is great way to fire up the imagination and inspiration for real world activities.

I totally agree with you, but those shows are not what parent means.

Yeah agreed. Really a ton of kids with tablets everytime I go out for dinner

Restaurants is a few places where a tablet is a godsend. Children aren't always involved in adults conversations, so they get (obviously) bored at the table. A tablet guarantees some time off to the parents.

Now obviously is a problem if you go to the restaurant often, in our case it's once every few months and having them watching a movie makes going to the restaurant possible again (we waited 6 years before we could)

Don't want to start a flame but what is missing to the children is exactly being bored.

We used to bring paper and pen to have them draw.

That's totally fine. My children get plenty of boring time, sometimes they get creative, sometimes they do not.

When they are creative, their creation is not always compatible with the environment (too noisy, too active). Not all children like drawing either. Tablet is consistent, which is helpful when going to a restaurant.

Just to be clear, I use tablet only as a tv, I don't allow any games, too many exploits child's mind.

If I went more often to the restaurant, it would make sense to have different activities though, you are right. We go maybe once every 2-3 months, so the tablet was acceptable. It has become way too expensive eating out.

>Restaurants is a few places where a tablet is a godsend. Children aren't always involved in adults conversations, so they get (obviously) bored at the table. A tablet guarantees some time off to the parents.

as a fellow restaurant patron : I don't care that your kid is bored or if you can't afford a baby-sitter -- what I do care about is listening to the latest baby shark or whatever other youtube-brainrot-babysitter-program blaring near me while I'm trying to eat my linguini.

When I was younger if you brought a loud/obnoxious kid to dinner at a restaurant it was a sign that either you were inexperienced as parents or too poor to afford a baby-sitter (which then raises questions about eating out..), or otherwise didn't give a fuck about appearances or anyone else near you.

Also : not all kids are bored by what adults are doing, and a big part of getting good at those kind of conversations and 'adult actions' later in life is fueled by social mimicry and third party practice; to dismiss all children from such activities by directing their attention towards whatever the closest thing that minimizes parenting time and effort is , imo, likely damaging.

But, at the end of the day I gotta throw my arms up and say "Well, i'm not a parent." -- but it just seems obvious to me as a bystander that this level of forced autonomy and independence for smaller children reduces any chance that a kid will say "Mom, what does that word you just used mean?" and actually learn something from a novel experience. It reduces the amount the kids will read the faces of strangers and make social decisions. It reduces the chance that a kid will make a social faux pas slip and require corrections preventing it in the future.

It does, however, keep a kid busy , often annoying everyone else, while you gossip. I'm not sure that's supposed to be the end goal here.

Children don't get the tablet immediately, they eat without the tablet and get it when they are done, so there is plenty of time to chat, with opportunities for talking with the adult.

That being said, everything you say makes sense, but the reality is if you don't get a break every couple of months for a few hours, the parents don't perform, so from my perspective they (and myself) get a pass for the tablet.

As for the volume, they can lower it? I'm very careful making sure the volume is low, but I guess some people aren't careful.

This also assumes the children don't spend time with the parents. The parents could be spending many hours with the children so whatever happens at the restaurant is very small in the big picture.

This is what we do. The kids don't get unlimited access to TV, but rather curated access to educational material, but we limit tv altogether on weekdays and they only get ipads at the restaurant. On the weekends they can watch a few fun movies in the afternoon.

Could you recommend some? This sounds great!

Could you recommend a few? I've found I need to very heavily curate these for my 6yo

For a 6 year old I'd start with

The Action Lab AntsCanada BizarreBeasts HowToMakeEverything PrimitiveTechnology TierZoo

but we've more moved onto

AlphaPhoenix BPS Space NileRed PBS Space Time Periodic Videos Veritasium

kids should be kids and do what other kids are doing, even if it's watching TV or playing video games, unless it’s something truly harmful.

watching TV hasn't killed anyone and my generation, who grew up in front of the TV screen for lack of better alternatives, turned out just fine.

The real issue now is with my parents’ generation, but that’s because they’re old and their mindset has become immutable, not because they watched too much TV.

TV tends to reinforce existing biases rather than create new ones.

IMO your kids will grow up thinking that TV is bad, and while it's mostly true that 'the medium is the message', they’re missing out on the opportunity to learn how to deal with it. It’s like a vaccine — it helps them build resilience.

>watching TV hasn't killed anyone and my generation, who grew up in front of the TV screen for lack of better alternatives, turned out just fine.

I don’t think any previous generation kids spend as much time in front of the TV as they do with the screens today, sadly the damage will only be seen when it is done. The difference is mainly the content, as bad as TV could have been in the past at least there was someone responsible and liable for the content put “on air” instead on the internet your child brain is at the mercy of the algorithm.

> My sister works with kids on their speech at a school and she's said that it's _bad_ how many children can't read or tell you what letter their first name starts with

This just blows my mind. Literally the first thing I taught my Toddler once he started learning letters was how to spell his own name.

I still remember how to fingerspell my old name, I'm not sure why mom taught me that.

It gets you familiar with the shapes of the letters in a more intimate way

Pedantic, but:

> She says that the teachers are getting flack at parent-teacher meetings

“flak” (strong criticism, derived by metaphor from anti-aircraft fire) not “flack” (a public relations agent).

Huh, I always get a kick of finding out I’ve been spelling something wrong for a while haha. I appreciate the correction.

When there were three television channels, children and adults found other things to do when there was nothing to watch. That's where you developed non-passive life skills.

Now TikTok gives a continuous dopamine hit tailored to their psych profile. Just click on the pictures like a proper trained ape.

> Is this because of an increase in the prevalence of child distractions like an iPad?

There is a massive class discrepancy emerging between communities where kids are always on devices, at school and at home, and those where it is controlled. The crack pipe being in the pocket is functionally different from a heavy object at home.

Decline of the stay at home mom. Both parents tired from work means less quality attention, less consistent meals, etc..

Sounds like we need to shorten the work week

My wife made very good money. She still quit her job to be a stay at home mom. Being a good parent to multiple children and taking care of yourself is pretty much impossible if both parents are working. Not every family can go single income but I think more could (and should) than do.

Depends on where you are. Some places have adopted fad curriculum for reading that results in illiteracy. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

Oh wow this is on the dot - this is something my sister has spoken to. The switch from phonics to (some other way of teaching reading by essentially guessing based on word shape that I can't recall the name of). It seems similar to common core math (not sure if that was just a New York thing) where no one thinks it's a good idea at first glance but it becomes standardized in schools still.

> She says that the teachers are getting flack at parent-teacher meetings because of this, but those are things that their parents teach them!

Clearly, they aren't things that the parents are teaching or there wouldn't be an issue, and there is a clash of expectations between teacher (and maybe school more broadly) and the parents.

> Other interesting things are that they're not teaching kids to read analog clocks anymore?

This was absolutely something that was taught in elementary schools when I was in school (I learned it from my parents, largely before starting, but not everyone did and it was absolutely taught as part of the curriculum; also, people who needed to know the time didn't usually have digital clocks on the wrist, in their pocket, and on their computer, plus voice assistants that will give a spoken report of the time in request, then, so it was a much more relevant skill. We started teaching our kids before they started school, but I can see why parents and schools would view it as less important today.)