A Reddit user is being hailed a hero after she shared an insanely easy way to break a toddler’s TV addiction.
The sleep-deprived mom began her now-viral post by explaining she allowed her 2-year-old son to have screen time when he started waking up at 4 a.m. every morning. “It was the only way he would stay quiet,” she explained. But her solution quickly backfired. Suddenly he wanted television all the time and would have meltdowns when he was denied the privilege.
But then one morning, she couldn’t find the remote and something incredible happened. “We looked for 10 minutes until my son happily gave up and decided to eat breakfast,” she revealed. “I had time for 5 minutes peace and then we went and hung out in his room. The next day I decided to hide it again. We looked for it but he soon gave up again without being upset. This morning was day 3 and tv wasn’t the first thing on his mind amazingly.”
The genius hack sparked a big discussion, with some parents chiming in with tricks that worked for them. “My 20 month old is obsessed with Daniel and Dora. If she’s gone past what I feel is an appropriate amount of screen time I tell her that it’s their nap time. She’s cool with that and she goes and plays,” commented one person. Another wrote that they have “tablets on timers so they can’t watch them 24/7.” A third shared that she takes the battery out of the remote and pretends the TV is broken.
But sometimes parents just need to let their kids zone out with Elmo. And that’s totally OK. As one mom noted: “My husband has to travel for several days and sometimes the TV is my helper. I try to choose educational shows and good cartoons, that’s all.”
