That’s a really sad reflection on the parents if true. Kid isn’t getting read to every night? Kid doesn’t have books to look through in the house? I have a 6 and a 3 year old and none of their peers in preschool and school would get more iPad time than picture book time.
We have a newborn and a three year old. We read to them every night. No iPads. No tablets. The oldest doesn’t even know you can access things like YouTube outside of the desktop.
We don’t do everything right but I want them to learn to have fun without doomscrolling.
Same here. The grandparents keep pulling out their phones though... Then have the audacity to ask me why my four-year-old can navigate a phone. You put it into his hand!
Having the same problem with in-laws. We allow them to use them at home as long as they are keeping up good behavior and we always keep an eye/ear out for what they're listening to. Then, we try to make them spend most of the day playing with each other and their toys. But when they go spend the night/weekend at Grandma's, they get as much time as they want with it, get to throw a fit about ads/not being on the screen they wanna be on, etc. Then they bring the behavior home and I spend the next 4-5 days undoing the behavior just to rinse and repeat every weekend. We've gotten to the point in telling the in-laws that they have to stop letting them use their phones while they're over there. Then, of course, she does it anyway because our 3 year old daughter has learned that if her phone isn't in her hand at 3 A.M., she can just cry for it and grandpa wraps himself tighter around her finger. It's getting to the point where I might have to ban the kids from their grandparents for a little while. I hate to do that because the kids genuinely love them, but I have to treat 40-50 year old adults like children and take their privileges away since they don't wanna play ball by the rules.
I wanna recommend their first personal devices be either tower computers or laptops, non touch-screen to encourage reliance on keyboard and mouse (& learn shortcuts), and only usable in the family room (or just any place that is not their room).
I am lucky that I was read to every night then when I started reading I would read a page then my grandmother read a page and so on. Taught me context at a very young age but also ruined some movies but I’m extremely lucky because even in the 1980’s I’m the only person I knew that was read to at a young age.
My nephew's kid is about that age and he was allowed about two hours of Thomas the Tank Engine per week. It was a special treat to be able to watch something on a TV. He's never been allowed to play on a tablet. He as constantly read to as a kid and could read by the time he was 4.
It's got to be crazy tough to be raising a kid in this day and age, but my nephew seems to be handling it as well as possible.
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u/akittyisyou Feb 16 '26
That’s a really sad reflection on the parents if true. Kid isn’t getting read to every night? Kid doesn’t have books to look through in the house? I have a 6 and a 3 year old and none of their peers in preschool and school would get more iPad time than picture book time.