I'm going to talk about a topic as controversial as abortion or gay marriage or gun laws. I'm going to talk about TODDLERS WATCHING TV/iPADS/PHONES. Dun dun dun. [Obviously, I am well aware that it's no where near as controversial as those things, but if you did not know better and got all of your information from blogs, forums and social media you may seem to think it was. I don't get all of my information from those sources, only about 98%.]
Let's start with me. I never remember any TV restrictions on us as children. Of course, we weren't interested in watching TV all hours of the day because there wasn't children's programming on at all hours of the day like there is now. So there's that big difference. Also, I never really liked much TV growing up. Never really liked cartoons and even as a pre-teen or teenager I used to always dread it when I was at a friend's house and all they wanted to do was watch TV. I am still like that pretty much today. (Although I did just start watching Season 1 of Dexter since Netflix now has it and I could easily waste away a few days just watching that.) Anyways, since that is my personal history of TV, I sort of wish the same for Charley.
At no point have I been anti-TV with Charley. Like, I never set a minimum age for her to watch TV or a set number of minutes of screen time she couldn't exceed or anything. But just by nature, we don't have the TV on a lot at our house so she didn't get exposed to it very often. When we moved in with my parents last year, she got a lot more exposure because they, by nature, have the TV on all day long. It's just what they do and I am okay with that too.
Where in the world am I going with this? I can't even remember. I've titled this 'Eggs Please?' so somehow I need to wind up talking about eggs and it's quite a leap from where we are right at this very second. Moving on...
Basically, Charley watches TV and asks daily to watch TV and it pains me a little bit. I am pretty sure she watches less TV than many other toddlers, but 1) I'm not home all day and therefore don't often need to use the TV as downtime and 2) I don't really care how much other toddlers watch TV in comparison. But I have read the blogs that are like ew, we don't watch TV here, we play outside and blah blah blah. You know what? Watching TV does not exclude playing outside. In fact, if you take a weekend day where we are home all day, Charley not only plays outside for the majority of the day but she also watches TV too! They are not mutually exclusive. You can do both! It's amazing! Assuming that children that watch TV don't play outside OR inside for that matter, is kind of a jerk statement to make. Or, maybe I'm being a jerk by assuming that your toddler can do two different activities in one day as my toddler can. Is your kid unable to do that? How rude of me to assume that.
I am seriously lacking focus today. I get all ranty and type up a storm and forget where in the world I was going with it. My whole point with that last paragraph was to poke fun at the statements I've read on forums, blogs, and on Facebook that TV watching children don't play outside. That's dumb.
And then I remember coming across some craziness with putting a blanket over the TV during commercials to protect the tiny developing brains from too much flashing or something. I've done exactly NO research on the topic because my fingers keep laughing at me as I go to type in the sentence in my search bar and I can't take the humiliation. So I don't research it and I don't keep a blanket handy to throw over the TV in case of a flashy commercial emergency. Is this really a thing? It's a good thing we mainly Netflix and have no commercials over here. We have absolutely no control or regard for the flashing in our home.
Charley likes Barney best of all. Remember how she had an Elmo party two months ago because Elmo was her favorite? Well that was a lie. About 3 weeks prior to her party she changed her mind and liked Barney better and I had to keep up an Elmo front about the furry red puppet being her favorite or else I would have had to exchange approximately 12 rolls of Elmo colored crepe paper. But truly Barney is for sure her favorite.
She also likes Mickey Mouse on occasion. It's definitely her favorite actual cartoon. She doesn't seem to like actual cartoons much which delights me so. She likes REAL people, such as giant purple dinosaurs and also previously liked small furry red puppets.
But if she is watching Barney or whatever on the iPad on YouTube, do you want to know what she inevitably ALWAYS finds? Egg videos. She's obsessed with egg videos. Let me give you an example.
They drive me crazy. It's always a low talker, monotone person narrating and the crinkly sound while opening the eggs is equally maddening. There's TWENTY FIVE eggs opened in that video, which means there are crinkling noises TWENTY FIVE times in six minutes and thirty three seconds and that's just not okay.
It's crazy really. We give her the iPad, she asks for Barney and we find a Barney episode for her. Then, she gets really impatient because it takes Barney so long to get to her favorite song...
...and she starts clicking on the suggested videos off to the right.
I swear, every single time, somehow, someway Barney video suggestions give way to EGG VIDEOS and I have no idea how. Then sometimes she'll want to skip the whole process she goes through to find egg videos and will straight up ask, "Eggs please?" What's a girl to do? It's not a cartoon, so that's a win in my book. It's also not a flashy video so no need to smother the iPad with a blanket, so another win. It also keeps her quiet and happy for about six minutes and thirty three seconds so a third win. But then crinkly noises are a definite loss. Do I continue to let this egg nonsense go on? Have you ever even seen such an egg in a store? Should I maybe buy her some egg surprises of her very own so she won't be forced to watch these videos on YouTube? Please, this is eggstremely important.
