Dear Past Me: The Completely Messy Truth About Baby TV & Screens

Dear Sarah from exactly six months ago,

You're currently hiding in the tiny downstairs half-bathroom. It's 6:14 AM on a Tuesday, and you're wearing Dave’s giant gray flannel shirt—the one with the missing button—and mismatched socks, clutching a lukewarm Yeti mug of dark roast coffee like it's a literal life preserver. Outside the door, Leo is having a Category 5 meltdown. He is four years old now, clutching his little plastic baby t-rex, and screaming because you finally grew a spine and turned off the television.

I know you're sitting on the cold tile, feeling like absolute crap, tracing this whole entire tantrum back to the days when he was a baby and you first introduced screens just so you could take a damn shower.

Look, I get it. When Maya was born, you were, like, the perfect Pinterest mom who never even let her look at a glowing rectangle. But by the time Leo came along three years later, you were just trying to survive the sheer chaos of two kids. You needed a break. So you turned on baby tv.

It started innocently enough. Ten minutes here so you could make dinner, fifteen minutes there so you could drink your coffee before it turned to ice. But then that hypnotic, brightly colored baby tv logo became the only thing that would stop him from crying, and suddenly you were waking up in the middle of the night with that absolutely unhinged beep beep baby tv theme song playing on a loop in your brain. It was a trap, and I'm writing this to tell you that you're not a terrible mother for falling into it, but we really need to talk about how we get out.

What Dr. Aris actually told me about the brain stuff

Do you remember when Leo was about nine months old and we took him in for his checkup? He was wearing that mustard yellow onesie that made him look like a tiny hotdog, and I was so exhausted I actually put my car keys in the refrigerator that morning. I casually mentioned to Dr. Aris that Leo loved this specific baby tv show, expecting him to be like, "Oh cool, glad he’s entertained!"

Instead, Dr. Aris gave me this look. Not judgmental, exactly, but that gentle doctor look that immediately makes your stomach drop to the floor. He told me that babies under 18 months really shouldn't be looking at screens at all. Which, okay, I knew that in theory, but I thought it was just because screens make them lazy or whatever. But he explained that a baby's brain literally can't understand what's happening on a flat 2D screen.

He called it a "video deficit" or something, which basically means that when we think they're learning their ABCs or whatever from a cartoon, their brains are just paralyzed by the flashing lights. It’s a biological reflex. They're staring because their nervous system is like, WHAT IS HAPPENING. They aren't absorbing information, they're just getting overstimulated. Anyway, the point is, Dr. Aris said their brains triple in size by age two, and they need 3D, real-world stuff to make those connections. Hearing that made me want to crawl under the exam table and never come out.

Oh, and those "educational" vocabulary DVDs that everyone buys? Complete garbage, they actually delay speech, so just throw them directly into the sun.

The background noise rant

This is the part that really makes me the most angry, because nobody told me about it, and Dave—bless his heart, I love my husband, but he's obsessed with having noise in the house—is completely guilty of this.

We used to just leave the TV on in the background all day. Not even kids' shows! Just, like, the news, or HGTV, or Dave’s endless sports highlights. I figured if Leo wasn't actively staring at the screen, it didn't matter. He was playing with his blocks on the floor, so who cares if some real estate agent is screaming about open concept kitchens in the background?

But it turns out, it matters SO MUCH. I read this thing later—or maybe Dr. Aris told me, my memory is basically Swiss cheese at this point—that background TV actively fractures a kid's attention span. When there's background noise, toddlers can't get into that deep, focused play. They play for two minutes, get distracted by a sudden noise from the TV, drop their toy, and wander off. It ruins their concentration. And worse, it ruins ours!

Parents talk less when the TV is on. I noticed it myself. When the house was quiet, I'd narrate my day to Leo. "Mommy is folding the red towel! Look at the red towel!" But when the TV was humming in the background, I just kind of zoned out and folded the laundry in silence. We were losing all those little moments of connection just so Dave could casually listen to a golf tournament he wasn't even watching.

Infuriating.

Things that seriously bought me five minutes of peace

So, you're probably thinking, "Great, Sarah, if I can't use screens, how the hell am I supposed to cook dinner without the baby crawling into the dishwasher?"

It’s a valid question. The solution isn't to entertain them yourself 24/7. If you try to be your baby's cruise director, you'll burn out and cry in the pantry (see paragraph one). You have to set up an environment where they can just... be. And you've to accept that sometimes they'll whine for a minute, and that's not an emergency.

If you're looking for things that honestly hold their attention in a healthy way, explore Kianao’s baby collection, because honestly, their stuff saved me when I finally detoxed Leo from the screens.

Here's what really worked in our house:

The one thing I swear by: When Leo was little, I bought the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set. My husband took one look at it and rolled his eyes because he thought it was just another aesthetically pleasing, sad beige hipster toy. But my god, it was magic. Unlike those crazy plastic play gyms that light up and play tinny circus music, this wooden one was just... calm. Leo would lie underneath it for like forty minutes just staring at the little hanging elephant and batting at the wooden rings. It gave him actual 3D sensory feedback without frying his tiny nervous system. I could drink a whole cup of coffee while he figured out how to coordinate his hands to grab the shapes. Lifesaver.

The thing that was just okay: We also got the Panda Teether when his molars started coming in. It's incredibly cute, and the silicone is super safe (no BPA or weird toxic crap), which I loved. But honestly? It didn't magically cure his teething tantrums. He chewed on it for a few minutes, threw it across the room, and then Maya stole it to use as a pet for her Barbie dolls. So, it’s fine! It’s a good product! Just don't expect it to be a miracle worker when your kid is cutting a tooth.

The unexpected necessity: You know what else makes a huge difference when they're playing on the floor? What they're wearing. I used to put Leo in these stiff little denim overalls because they looked cute for Instagram, but he couldn't move his legs. I switched to the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit—the sleeveless one—and it was a game changer. The organic cotton is so breathable, and it finally cleared up that weird red friction rash he used to get on his neck. Yes, he immediately got mashed sweet potato all over the beautiful natural fabric, but whatever. He could genuinely wiggle and roll without being restricted.

The sleep disaster I totally missed

Let's talk about the nights. You know how Leo went through that phase where it took him two hours to fall asleep, and he kept waking up screaming at 3 AM?

Yeah, that was the screens.

I feel so stupid for not putting it together sooner. We had this routine where we would wind down by watching a "calming" show right before bed. We thought it was helping him relax. But my doctor told me that the blue light from screens suppresses melatonin production. So we were basically shining a tiny spotlight into his retinas that told his brain it was high noon, and then we were shocked—SHOCKED, I tell you—when he wouldn't just peacefully drift off to sleep in his crib.

Once we cut the evening screen time and replaced it with just looking at actual, physical board books, his sleep didn't become perfect overnight (because toddlers are feral), but the midnight night terrors basically stopped.

Anyway, past Sarah, I just want you to know that you're doing your best. Motherhood is messy, and we all lean on the TV sometimes because we're drowning in laundry and exhaustion. Just turn off the background noise, hide the remotes, put the kid on the floor with some wooden blocks, and breathe. You will survive this Tuesday morning.

Love,
Sarah

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The answers to your frantic late night questions

If you're reading this while hiding in your own pantry, here are the messy, honest answers to the things I used to furiously Google at 2 AM.