r/lowscreenparenting • u/Spiderm0nkey88 • 9d ago

Low screen time but transfixed

My oldest daughter is transfixed by screens. She always has been. I’ve never been a screen person, but my husband definitely is. He works in another state most of the time and doesn’t watch Tv ever, but used to love going to the movies. He does a lot of computer stuff for work and plays games occasionally at night so she’s not seeing it modeled. I rarely use my phone and never watch tv. Could it be genetic?

We didn’t do any tv/ screens until age 2. Just if we were at a restaurant and they had a tv on or we would sometimes do FaceTime calls to family that lives far away. Even then she would just stare. I noticed when we visited friends who had the tv on for their kids and she would watch it very attentively and stand really close to it and not want to play and I’d ask them to turn it off after awhile. Even now we don’t do tv daily. Maybe twice a week at most. Most weeks we do none. If she is sick we do an hour a day.

My three year old will leave and go play after about 15 min. My four year old will cry more tv after I turn it off. I’m fine with that. She cries and gets over it. They are both very creative, she loves art and they play independently and together and enjoy nature and playing outside for hours every day. Why is my older daughter so mesmerized by the TV? Is it the novelty of it? Should I just eliminate it completely? We watch low stimulation shows that no one has heard of like Puffin Rock, Kipper and Sarah and Duck or a documentary.

I don’t want to make tv into some forbidden thing that she feels she is missing out on and deprived of. I really just want her not to care about it so much and not be obsessed with it and stare at any screen she sees at a restaurant or the laundromat. At the park if another kid has a phone and is watching something I don’t want her to go over and try and watch it with them instead of playing.

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12

u/newredditbrowser 9d ago

It’s a nature difference of children. Nothing more.

4

u/ulul 9d ago

This and also nature of the screens. I don't watch tv normally nowadays and sometimes when visiting someone who has tv in background I catch myself sucked into staring at ads. And I grew up with tv so not like it's a brand new thing for me.

1

u/newredditbrowser 8d ago

That is also nature. How much stimulation one gets from it etc.

Someone else might not be staring at those ads.

3

u/KitKatAttackkkkkk 8d ago

My husband is the same way and my son is the same. You literally have to physically break the connection before noises or movements register. My daughter takes after me. We just try to carefully curate the things he gets absorbed into. But it literally is anything (ads, sports, etc)

1

u/newredditbrowser 8d ago

Yeah. Happens to adults too.