Dear Tom: The Truth About Baby Games Online and Screen Time

Dear Tom from exactly six months ago,

I know precisely where you're right now, mostly because I can still feel the lingering trauma in my left shoulder. You're huddled by Gate 42 at Gatwick Airport, sweating profusely through a shirt that already smells faintly of sour milk, desperately typing "baby games online" into your phone with your thumb while using your other arm to stop Chloe from licking the departure lounge carpet.

Mia, meanwhile, is executing a baby g-force level meltdown in the travel buggy because you took away the empty Costa cup she was trying to eat.

You're looking for a digital babysitter. You're praying to the patron saint of exhausted millennial parents that a glowing rectangle will hypnotise your two-year-old twins long enough for you to board an easyJet flight without social services being called. I'm writing to tell you to put the phone down, take a deep breath, and prepare yourself for the fact that the digital salvation you're looking for is a complete mirage.

The app store is a terrifying place for tired parents

I know you think you're going to find a lovely, gentle, ad-free baby game that will teach them the alphabet in soothing, neutral tones. You won't. What you'll find, after frantically scrolling through the search results for "baby games", is a chaotic wasteland of digital extortion.

Most of the apps marketed to us are actually bizarre virtual pet simulators where a poorly animated cartoon dog asks you to brush its teeth, interrupted every fourteen seconds by a blaring advert for a crypto trading platform. Or worse, you'll download what looks like a harmless bubble-popping game, only to discover it has a hidden subscription model that will quietly drain fifteen quid a week from your bank account until you notice it three months later (yes, that happens, and no, the bank won't refund you, they'll just judge you).

You think you're buying peace and quiet, but what you're actually doing is handing a sticky, highly drooled-upon iPad to a toddler who will accidentally click a banner ad, open Safari, and somehow manage to email your former boss a string of random emojis.

What Dr. Evans actually said while we weren't listening

Do you remember when we took the girls in for their check-up and you were so sleep-deprived you accidentally gave the receptionist your Starbucks order instead of your name? Dr. Evans, our endlessly patient NHS GP, brought up the whole screen time thing. You nodded along, pretending to absorb the medical wisdom while really just trying to pry a wooden tongue depressor out of Mia's fist.

I looked it up later, because I felt guilty. Dr. Evans was basically saying that a baby's brain is completely baffled by a 2D screen. I'm paraphrasing here, and she wrapped it up in a lot of soft medical jargon, but my basic understanding is that giving an iPad to a toddler is like trying to teach a goldfish to speak French—the hardware just isn't there yet to process the information.

She mentioned something about joint attention, which apparently means babies only really learn when they're making eye contact with a tired, desperate adult who's physically holding a 3D object. The synapses or neurons or whatever only fire properly when they drop a block on your foot and register the resulting noise of pain you make. The screen might stop them crying for ten minutes, but it's basically mental junk food, replacing the actual physical sensory stuff they need to figure out how gravity works.

The reality of trying to do digital co-play

There will be moments—like when you're trapped in seat 14B somewhere over the Bay of Biscay—where you simply have to use a screen to avoid a mutiny from the other passengers. But rather than just handing over the device and praying for a medically induced coma, you'll eventually figure out that sitting there narrating every single pixel like a deranged sports commentator, loudly asking "can you poke the red balloon?" while physically guiding their sticky little finger to the glass, is the only way to make it slightly less mind-numbing for them, even if it completely strips you of whatever dignity you've left.

You have to put the phone on aeroplane mode. You have to lock down the in-app purchases. And you've to accept that you're not getting a break; you're just participating in a very annoying, flat, glowing version of real life.

Physical stuff that really keeps them quiet

Here's the massive pivot you need to make, past-Tom. Stop looking for baby games online and start looking at the actual physical world, which is basically one massive, highly dangerous playground for them anyway.

For instance, object permanence games. This sounds very academic, but it basically just means playing peek-a-boo until you lose the will to live, or hiding a wooden spoon under a tea towel and acting like David Copperfield when you reveal it. They will find this hilarious for roughly forty-five minutes. You can literally just put safe household objects in an empty Amazon box, let them pull them out one by one while you say the name of the object in a weird high-pitched voice, and you've essentially replicated the highest-rated educational app on the market.

Tummy time was a medieval torture device when they were newborns, but now that they're older, you can just build a completely unhinged obstacle course out of sofa cushions and laundry baskets in the living room.

A quick word on the gear we ended up relying on

Since you're currently in the airport, you can't buy this right now, but when you get home, you need to rethink the toys lying around the house. We bought a lot of loud, flashing plastic rubbish that takes eight AA batteries and sings a song that makes my left eye twitch.

What seriously saved our bacon was investing in a few solid, non-insane items. We eventually picked up the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set with Animal Toys from Kianao. I know, six months ago you probably thought wooden sensory toys were exclusively for parents who make their own hummus and talk about their child's aura. But honestly, this thing is brilliant. It doesn't flash. It doesn't sing. It's just a solid wooden A-frame with these really nice, tactile animal shapes hanging from it. When Chloe was a bit smaller, she would just lie there and bat at the wooden elephant for ages, totally fascinated by the clacking sound it made. It's calming. It looks nice in the living room instead of looking like a primary-coloured explosion, and it genuinely helped them figure out hand-eye coordination without overloading their tiny, fragile nervous systems.

We also have the Gentle Baby Building Block Set. They're... okay. Look, they're made of a very safe, soft material, and the pastel colours are lovely, but I've to be honest with you: Mia mostly just uses the square block to assert dominance over her sister by throwing it at her head. They do float in the bath, which is a mild bonus, but as far as building goes, they mostly just enjoy destroying whatever tower I spend three minutes carefully constructing. But hey, it's better than screen time.

Also, brace yourself: the molar teething phase is coming. It's going to be horrific. They will turn into feral badgers who chew on the coffee table legs. Get the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. It's flat, they can seriously grip it properly, and you can chuck it in the fridge. When Mia is screaming at 3 AM because a tooth is erupting, handing her a cold silicone panda is vastly superior to handing her your iPhone and hoping Cocomelon numbs the pain.

Take a look at the full collection of Kianao wooden toys and teethers when you've a minute—they're sustainable, they don't beep, and they won't accidentally buy a subscription to a weird app.

The light at the end of the tunnel

So, sitting there at Gatwick, delete the search for baby games online. Shut the phone off. Hand them an empty water bottle. Let them crinkle the plastic. Let them chew on the boarding passes (they print extras at the desk, I checked). Talk to them about the aeroplanes out the window. It takes more energy in the short term, but it stops them from becoming little dopamine-addicted zombies in the long term.

You will survive this flight. You will survive the teething. You will survive the fact that your house now looks like a bomb went off in a nursery.

Before you completely lose your mind trying to keep two toddlers entertained without resorting to a glowing screen, make sure you explore some physical alternatives that won't ruin their retinas. Check out the organic and sustainable playtime essentials at Kianao to save your sanity.

Some things you're probably going to Google at 3 AM

Are any online baby games seriously okay for a two-year-old?

Honestly, Dr. Evans made it sound like they're pretty much all useless for actual brain development at this age. If you absolutely have to use one because you're trapped in a metal tube at 30,000 feet, pick something where they've to physically tap the screen to make a noise happen, and turn your Wi-Fi off so they don't click on adverts for car insurance.

What's the best alternative to screen time when I need ten minutes to make dinner?

Tupperware. I'm completely serious. Open the kitchen drawer, pull out all the plastic containers and their mismatched lids, and let them try to fit them together. It makes a horrendous racket on the kitchen floor, but it's a highly good, completely free sorting game that requires zero batteries and zero internet connection.

How do I stop my toddler from having a meltdown when I take the phone away?

You don't. The meltdown is coming. You just have to lean into it. I've found that the best strategy is the old 'bait and switch'—you remove the phone while simultaneously handing them something highly novel, like a whisk, or a slightly damp sponge, or the Kianao wooden block they haven't seen in three days. It works about sixty percent of the time.

Why do experts hate screens for babies so much?

From what I gather, a baby's brain is basically a tiny, highly absorbent sponge that needs real, 3D feedback to learn anything. A screen is just flashing lights. It doesn't smell like anything, it doesn't have a texture (other than the sticky jam they smeared on it), and it doesn't react to them the way a human face does. It hypnotises them rather than engages them, which is great for a tired dad, but rubbish for their squishy little developing brains.

Can I just leave the TV on in the background?

Apparently, background TV is also a massive distraction for them. It pulls their attention away from the blocks they're trying to stack or the dog they're trying to ride. I used to leave the news on constantly until I realised it was making us all terribly anxious. Now we just listen to a lot of questionable nursery rhyme playlists on Spotify instead. It's marginally better for the soul.