Screen Time for Toddlers: Best Practices
Co-viewing, or parents and children engaging in screen time together, is the best strategy to help your toddler learn the most during screen time.
Co-viewing allows parents to relate what toddlers are seeing and hearing back to their everyday life, which allows toddlers to continue to practice with what they've learned and also helps them not forget new information.
Best practices for screen time with your toddler:
Practice with an app, but also next to mirror so that you and your child take turns practicing the words/skills/sounds together. Try to remember what some of these words are that are important in your child’s daily life and practice those throughout the day
Pick a category of words to explore in an app, but then immediately after, or even better alongside the app, have toys from that category to interact with
So let’s say today within an app, you choose Farm vocabulary. In addition to the app, grab your child’s farm toys, or farm puzzle pieces, or a farm book.
As your child advances to a new word on the app, maybe it’s “sheep”, have the toy sheep ready to run across the table, or give your child sheep kisses, or pet the soft sheep’s wool in the book. Pretend to help the sheep eat, or take a nap or drive a car.
When the app is put away, keep those farm toys out and available for more playtime and exposure with these words. Maybe also read a farm book at bedtime. The goal is that the app can be one tool, but is not the primary focus of how to teach your child new words--that needs to be with experience and play
Use the screen for meaningful interactions with friends/family via FaceTime, Zoom or Skype. Encourage friends/family to practice certain sounds or vocabulary with your child. Invite them to play with you and your child, even across the screen such as pretending to give tickles or read books with them or blow bubbles together (both you and the family member would need bubbles to blow)
These are all examples of co-viewing: a parent watching with or alongside your child --to then be able to use something seen in the app/TV/show to pull it into real life experiences.
In addition, there are updated screen time guidelines given by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) from 2019. Note that for all ages, co-viewing (with a parent/caregiver) is preferred over solo-viewing. This chart, as well as a more in-depth article from the AAP, can be found here:
Written By:
Melissa Sartori, MS CCC-SLP
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