Many young mothers escape “Groundhog Day” by endlessly watching series and TV shows. The child is still small, he just lies next to him in a deck chair or bed. But isn’t it harmful?
Question. The child is six months old. I save myself from the routine by watching TV shows while he sleeps in my arms. I don’t want to completely drop out of life, and it’s also important that there is something to discuss with my girlfriends…
But I worry: what if it harms the child?
Answer. Sounds are an important part of a child’s sensory picture of the world.
Why do children turn on “white noise” to calm them down?
Because for him, this is an association with time, when he was in the womb and heard how the blood hummed in his vessels, how food moved through his intestines, how his heart was beating.
Already by the age of 20 weeks of intrauterine development, the child begins to hear and distinguish all these sounds, he already lives in their world. He responds with movements to his mother’s voice.
For some reason, many people believe that when a child is just born, he does not respond to sounds. And therefore, the sound of a working TV, for example, allegedly does not cause discomfort to him.
But in reality, of course, this is not the case. Just a healthy child gets tired of being awake and falls asleep no matter what. He has his own rhythm, and he lives in it.
But TV background noise is not equal to “white noise”. Background noise creates unnecessary stress. And the child reacts to it – not immediately, no. He just gets tired faster. Becomes whiny and noisy.
It is difficult for him to fall asleep, and now he wakes up for a long time, often crying. All this is precisely the result of the exhaustion of the nervous system.
This kind of background noise is not useful to anyone. Differentiated sounds are useful and should be mandatory. But these should be understandable, logical, natural sounds.
For a small child, the most natural sound is the mother’s voice.
And now it’s better for you and the baby to turn off the TV while with him – or use good quality headphones when watching.
Does it harm if I watch a series on a tablet or smartphone with my baby in my arms?
Handheld screen time from smartphones and tablets is even more harmful to your baby, as these devices are held closer to him than a TV.
Sure, skyping on your phone with your mother is not the same as watching series for an hour or more.
However, only for a very short time a baby is able to normally react to sparkling pictures and sounds from a smartphone or a tablet in front of him.
And then his eyes tense up, stop blinking, the eyeballs dry up from lack of fluids that moisten them when he blinks. As a result, the child’s eyes begin to hurt, he becomes naughty, becomes nervous, irritable, mood swings only intensify.
Experts say that for every 30 minutes of screen time with your baby in your arms, there is a 49% increased risk of speech development delay.