[kumarvvr]

Youtube cartoons are the staple video content to slap onto a mobile or a tv to get toddlers to eat. Here in India, its scary how much parent neglect to engage with children and just put a cartoon and stuff foid into their mouth, while they themselves are busy on a call or fiddling with their phones.

Almost every toddler I have seen has an old broken phone as their own video player.

[Sai_]

You got to do what you got to do otherwise you risk the kid going hungry or having a meltdown or both.

Being so black and white about sticking a video in front of a kid to make sure it sits in one place and eats is dismissive of parents who have to make these decisions in real time.

Do we know those kids don’t get play time with friends? Or down time to get bored and hence be forced to invent games in their own heads? We only see and opine on “bad” behaviour, not the what happens behind closed doors the remaining 23 hrs of the day when the kid is out of our line of sight.

[squokko]

Kids ate food before smartphones existed. They miss one meal, throw one meltdown, and quickly learn that it's better to eat than go hungry.

[Sai_]

Not sure if one meltdown is the mean or even the median for how much time a kid takes to learn how to sit in one place without being distracted.

In any case, it doesn’t matter a whit if the average is one meltdown if your kid has gone without two consecutive meals. All this theorising goes out the window when the third meal is coming up and you’re struggling to get a morsel inside your kid. How many consecutive meals are you willing to let your kid skip on principle?

Comparing what we did in the past, how we lived in the past, what worked two decades ago is basically useless.

Phones exist. On demand entertainment exists. Kids know it. You know it. You aren’t putting any genie back in the bottle by trying to explain to your kid that since you grew up without being amused into eating, they need to do that too.

[hfhdjdks]

Not in India, but I've seen parents here sit down at a restaurant table and shove a cell phone in front of a toddler the second they sit down. They don't allow the kid to even get bored, try to do other stuff or interact with the kid. In my experience, a 1-2-3 year old kid doesn't have the "cellphone have cartoons, gimme!" unless they've been educated to expect that.

Does that seem like a bad habit to impose on your kids + you not engaging with them? It does to me. Am I gonna call (the equivalent to) child services? No. Do I make other probably equally bad choices for my kids? Quite likely.

No need to get defensive.

[justsomehnguy]

> unless they've been educated to expect that.

And this is critical.

I've seen enough times when kid did expected to receive what they wanted and threw a tantrum if not.

[rokkitmensch]

And this is why my default response is no. Eat your damn veggies.

[squokko]

What happened to kids who refused to eat 200 years ago? Did they just starve themselves to death? I'm open to information.

I've never used phones with my kids. They throw plenty of tantrums at meals. Sometimes they don't eat. They are alive and fine.