For parents out there, have you felt this way when you let your children watch some videos in Youtube?
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash Edited in Canva
Sure enough, there are a ton of studies, blog posts and even commentary from other people about how bad screentime is to our little one and I think an additional reminder on how it affects your child isn't helpful anymore.
I am a silent reader in a parent support group for fathers DadbudPH and one of the questions being asked by some of the fathers is about screentime and if it is okay for their baby to watch Songs for Littles - Toddler Learning Videos aka Ms. Rachel to some and the feedback that was given is outstanding!
Prior to becoming a parent, my wife and I discussed not having screentime for our child but in this day of age, it is hard! Entertaining a kid is not an easy task especially if you are doing some other stuff, parents without any helper can relate to this as the baby will be requiring a lot of attention from parents.
Since I am working full time and April is doing some house chores, we resort to letting our kid watch some videos on Youtube. Before you raise an eyebrow, we do not use our smartphones that much but rather we use my desktop so there are times wherein I am not able to log in to Hive especially morning this is the main perpetrator. Now going back we let our child watch the following.
>/center>
We let Dyn-Dyn watch it for quite some time before she hit 1 year old because of the colorful stuff that it shows. I myself love the musicality of the videos but there is some stuff that I do not like as Ava's kinda a bitch spoiled brat.
From the makers of Sesame Street we also let our child watch some videos. Compared to Dave and Ava this one is quite better as the songs and actions are child friendly plus there are puppets
Dyn-Dyn is responding to sounds and the animation but at some point, we noticed that she isn't used to talking not babbling. We are both quiet in the household and if compared to the usual noisy house wherein there are multiple people in our case we are just either doing our task of caring for our child. Plus, I am a keyboard warrior I am not used to talking at all.
We are comforted by some of our friends ( same age and almost same situation ) that we should be trusting our child more and she will be speaking fluently soon but the older generation didn't even spare us and mentioned that our kid might be deaf and mute.
It was relayed information to me by my wife and as a response, I told her to block all of the naysayers because they do not help at all. They are only seeing our child in the videos uploaded by April so if they don't see anything they cannot give any remarks at all.
So going back to Ms. Rachel also tried it and compare Dyn-Dyn's response is way better!
Surprisingly, she is more talkative than she was before. Aside from the dad's community approval I also saw some good feedback on how the videos of Ms. Rachel helped their child in speaking.
Here are some stuff that we love about using Ms. Rachel's video
Learning is Fun with Music!
The videos of Ms. Rachel are catered to small kids, it isn't loud compared to Cocomelon, Dave and Ava, and other kids' youtube video that is rampant nowadays. Also, there are close shots wherein she shows in the video how to pronounce words, it doesn't feel that they are being thought of as something as it is presented musically too. Even us oldies tend to learn if they are in music format. If you will compare, you can easily memorize songs rather than the whole text document.
Interactive and Makes You Participate!
During times that we are watching the video, we as a parent mimic what Ms. Rachel is doing, I can now do the dance Wind the bobbin up with my eyes closed! We make sure that if there are motions and gestures we try to do what is shown in that way Dyn-Dyn can also copy. At times when I am writing a blog post, I just play the video in the background and we try to practice the hand movements.
The Downside:
I think the only downside that I am seeing is her familiarity with the English language at a young age. I mean, it is good to speak and understand English but we would not want her to become one of the kids who are having a hard time speaking in Tagalog. If possible the only time that we use English is when I take in some phone calls during meetings and some stuff relating to work but for our daily interaction, it should be in Tagalog.