I watched a 2-year-old for the weekend. Mom claims 2yo is pretty emotional and cries often. Don’t really see that during stay. Occasional normal kid stuff but always resolved quickly. I noticed she occasionally asked to play on her iPad but as a babysitter I felt it was more responsible for me to say “not right now, we’re going to [activity, game, tidy up].” So there was no iPad or TV for three days. And a lot of it was independent play. She would color and read and play with toys without me for long stretches. (Once she told me she was “busy” and she was just observing a keychain and taking in its contours.)
Her mom and dad return and give her iPad on first request. She plays with it peacefully while adults talk. Mom moves to take it away for bedtime and it’s immediate tantrum. Screaming and crying tears. The screaming continues all the way to bathtime and bed. Mom and Dad have to cajole her with a snack and lots of attention for about twenty minutes before her crying stops.
Now, I want to be fair to these parents: toddler is overwhelmed by Mom and Dad returning from a, by her standards, “long” time away. It’s getting late, toddler is tired and maybe actually did need that snack. Toddlers also just act different around babysitters than they do mom and dad.
But for a toddler who was a pleasant and attentive kid for three days to dissolve into tantrum of that length as soon as she is reunited with and then separated from her iPad freaks me out. She is not a teen upset she can’t communicate with her friend. She’s not even a grade-schooler who didn’t save their Minecraft world. She’s a toddler who is distressed by being separated from an overstimulation machine.
Her parents have convinced themselves it’s a tool and a convenience by handing it to her and gaining silence at mealtimes and car rides and every request when she’s a bright kid who can spend just as much time with a book as with a screen, with much less distress at separation.
Idk, maybe there are people out there who are actually having great experiences with their kids with iPads but if I wasn’t turned off from iPads before, damn I am now. I felt so WEIRD and UPSET seeing that sweet kid scream like that. It was totally against everything I knew about her personality, but totally in line with everything her mom had warned me about.
snowghoul
vaporwave
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
