I Finally Caved and Let My One Year-Old Watch Television
It turns out, I’m surprisingly okay with it
Before having our first child, my husband and I decided to lay out a few ground rules for parenting in terms of how we wanted to raise our children. It wasn’t an extremely in-depth plan nor was it heavily detailed, we just knew that there were certain things that we did and didn’t want to do.
We were fortunate enough to have watched many family members and close friends become parents, which made the thought of us becoming parents much less intimidating. It was comforting to know that we had a strong network to rely on in case we ever had any burning questions or were in need of some friendly parenting advice (even if that advice came unsolicited).
In observing the different parenting styles modeled by our family and friends, we took note of some of the parenting tidbits and hacks that we wanted to incorporate when we became parents ourselves — favorite baby products, brands of clothing, helpful bedtime routines, etc.
But, of the many baby products and parenting hacks that we factored in, the one topic that we were quite firm about was that we didn’t want to over-expose our children to too much technology, especially in the early stages of their lives. More specifically, television.
