Kiddling Time

Welcome to Kidling Time on the Wix app. Check out the features above and start exploring!

Don't get me wrong, I love my grandkids, however they are super smart and aware for their age, inquisitive as hell and mentally exhausting after a time because they are at an age where they need lots of stimulus. If there's not enough interesting going on, they want that stimulus to come from you; the big person looking after them.

It was interesting yesterday when we had about three hours of cousin time and all of them spent that time interacting with each other and only minimal bugging of parents, you know the kind - I'm hungry, I'm hurting, etc. I don't recall hearing I'm bored but then with four adults and five kids there were a lot of distractions.

Anyway, while I was looking after them earlier in the week, they ended up with screen time just so all of us could have a break. The difference was, it was hot, my air con wasn't working and in order to keep cool we stayed in the one room with fans on meaning I was able to spend a lot of the time in their vicinity doing my thing too.

Little Miss is into unicorns and is the type that can watch the same thing over and over. Big brother now knows that if he puts up with some repetition eventually you tube will give them something new to watch after.

What was important was that BOTH of them kept questioning what was happening. In truth the characters, the unicorn in particular, were doing some really silly stuff just to have things 'bright and colourful' and often sweet tasting two. Although they don't quite know how much an ounce is, they both knew there was an awful lot of sugar going into the sweets. The idea of green potato mash was revolting until I said that it wouldn't change the taste and for once what they were making would be healthy and tasty. Pulling apart markers, makeup and books just to create a rainbow item was seen as a little extreme, especially after I pointed out to them that the new items wouldn't last as long as the originals would have. And both said some of the food temptations were just "too much".

So they had screen time and they had education, thinking and interaction going on too. It made it interesting for all of us, as I was involved too and able to get them to question what they were watching.

The article backs up what we were unconsciously doing. 😁

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/15/679304393/forget-screen-time-rules-lean-in-to-parenting-your-wired-child