Real Tips for Screen-Conscious Parenting (From a Mom Whose Toddler is Attached to Her Approximately Always)
What 20 months of screen-conscious parenting has actually looked like — from cooking, car rides, restaurants, diaper changes, big feelings, the wins, the challenges, and everything in between.
The other day I was trying to get dinner on the table and Keira was doing her thing where she’s pulling on my legs, asking to be picked up. I had hot things on the stove, I needed both hands, and I just needed to get it done.
I told her she could either stand on the toddler tower next to me, or she could go find something to do. She wanted neither — she wanted me, which is often the case. When I try to put her down, she does an impressive lower-body crunch and wraps her legs around me like a koala, so her feet won’t even touch the ground. The only way to set her down is to gently lay her on her back, which feels a little ruthless every single time, and yet here we are.
So that’s what I did. I told her, “Mommy’s right here.” And I went back to the stove. She was certainly not happy. She cried and protested on the floor for a while. Yes, I did feel guilty, but I stayed strong and stood my ground.
Eventually, she calmed down (and sometimes it escalates…) — but, this time, she got bored enough to wander over to her table with all her crayons. She found her little grocery basket and started transferring crayons from the carton into the basket. Then back into the carton. Then into the basket. Pick up the basket, set it down, start all over again. She was completely absorbed. Completely in her own world.
I watched her from the stove and thought: this is the muscle I want to keep building in her. To know that she is safe, mom and dad are here, and she can move through the big feelings and come out the other side of it. Sure, I could have handed her my phone when I was feeling overwhelmed — it was right there on the counter — but that’s not the reflex I’m trying to build in either of us.
Screens have come up a few times in our little group chat lately, and I’ve been sitting with what I actually want to say about it. Because I do have thoughts — we’ve been pretty intentional about this in our house — but I also know this is one of those topics that can feel charged, and that’s not what I’m here to do.
If you've found a flow that works for your family, I'm not here to mess with that one bit.
But for the parents who are curious about what it looks like to navigate the hard toddler moments without reaching for a screen, I wanted to share what’s been helpful for us.
Before I dive in — it’s not because we have an unusually chill baby. Keira is many amazing, wonderful things, and I mean that with my whole heart. “Easy” is just not one of them, haha. My little lover girl is spirited and full-on and wants to be held approximately always. The diaper changes alone could be their own essay. 🤣🤼♀️ 🐊 We have struggled with things that none of my friends have dealt with, and it has felt isolating at times.
But, the hard parts absolutely do not outweigh the immense love, joy, and fulfillment I get to experience as her mom.
For the sake of this particular essay, I’ll be focusing on the hard parts… sharing how we got through it sans the screen!
Here’s where we’ve landed, nearing 20 months in — what our “screen conscious” approach actually looks like, what’s worked, what’s been a challenge.
Take what feels useful, leave what doesn’t. No judgement here.
A little bit on our setup, because I think context matters:
I'm Keira's primary caregiver pretty much all day. Andrew works a remote 9-to-4ish, and I squeeze in work during her naps — so we're talking maybe two-ish hours a day on a good day. My mom is the only other person who has ever watched her, and in the past, helps two or three times a week. But, we are in Dallas, and she is back in Austin right now. So, it’s me and Kiwi M-F!
So, I am no stranger to running things solo with my extremely lovable and mommy-obsessed barnacle toddler who I am equally obsessed with.
I just think it's useful to know who you're taking advice from, and whether our situations are similar enough for this to be useful to you. And if you're also a co-sleeping, exclusively breastfeeding mama — you already know the particular kind of velcro we're dealing with over here, haha.
That said, once our renovations are done, my parents are moving in with us, and I know that's going to change our daily rhythm in theee best way! I imagine we’ll keep a semblance of the same schedule, because I definitely don’t want to exploit my mom, lol. But, I imagine our mornings and evenings together, cooking as a family, everyone who loves Keira most under one roof, sharing in the care. This is the village I always dreamed of, and I don’t take any of it for granted.
Our Approach Re: Screens
Before Keira was born, Andrew and I were aligned on the fact that we wanted to be really mindful about screens, especially in the early years. So for us that meant not giving her our phone or a tablet to play with, or putting her in front of a show on her own, or giving her a screen when we both actually need to co-regulate. We basically made a pact and said we’d push through the hard parts together.
Part of that came from what I'd read — the research out there is not exactly reassuring. But beyond the science, it just made intuitive sense to us. We don’t even fully understand what screens are doing to us as adults, so if I can protect her little developing brain for as long as possible, I want to.
Pick your hard.
At the end of the day, no one can truly skip the hard parts. So, our unofficial motto has been “pick your hard”. We decided we’d rather roll up our sleeves and bulldoze through it now and build on it, so that one day we can all sit at a restaurant together and actually enjoy a meal.
I think about family game nights, her getting lost in a book, making up stories with her toys, using that wild imagination of hers. There will come a time when screens are everywhere — school, friends, all of it. But right now, in these early years, I want to foster the kind of play and creativity that I hope she carries with her.
That’s the vision that has kept us going!
And look, I pick the easy-now-maaaaybe?-harder-later road all the time:
We allow snacks in the car, and our car is disgusting because of it… more on this below.
She still has a pacifier at naps and bedtime at 19 months. Future me can deal with that one.
We co-sleep. It felt easier in the beginning, and it still feels right, but at the same time I’m unsure of the future transition... or if we decide to have a second. But, I choose not to worry about it for now.
I still nurse on demand all day and night. Mostly I enjoy it, but at night… that’s starting to wear me down. However, it’s the most effective tool in my toolbox and I don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s another one of those… I’ll deal with it later kind-of-things.
Screentime just happens to be the one thing that doesn’t make the list.
And those really sticky, exhausting, overstimulating, challenging moments are where so much of the connection and co-regulation are built and how kids (and us as parents) learn to work through hard feelings together.
I've already seen so much growth in her, and sometimes I catch myself just watching her and thinking, wow, you're really growing up. She has this look in her eyes lately like she's really listening, really paying attention, wanting to be a team. It makes me so freaking proud of her. And so hopeful that what we're pouring into her now, going all in during these early years, is already starting to take root.
But trust me when I say, there are some days I’m texting Andrew mid-afternoon while he’s working like, please tell me you have a break coming, I need to sit in a dark room for 30 minutes. I get it deeply.
For the first year of her life we were pretty strict about it.
We really were not wanting to expose her to screens at all. But we noticed the more covert we were about our phones, the more obsessed she became with them. Every time one came out she was locked in, desperate to grab it, super fixated. The scarcity of it ended up backfiring.
So, after 12 months we shifted our approach.
Y’all this is the longest essay I’ve ever written, but I wanted to write it with so much care! Behind the paywall, I share:
How the first year of screen-conscious parenting actually went — including what backfired and how we adjusted
Our “pick your hard” motto and the easy-now-maybe-harder-later list
Real life tips for getting through cooking, restaurants, car rides, and diaper changes without reaching for a screen — including the bobo crab game, which I promise makes sense in context
What we actually reach for instead of screens
How I’ve been working on holding firm boundaries where it matters— even when it results in a meltdown — and why the goal was never to avoid the hard feeling
Where we’re headed, and why I feel so proud of our little trio!
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