Natural childhood is a topic of mine for a future post. I started to add on the topic in this post but it does not fit. I want to go into letting our two year old watch dvd's in the car. People have mixed thoughts on the topic of screen time as they want kids to be in a natural state of examining the world around them. Well when strapped into a car seat unable to move for sometimes nearly an hour moving at high speeds down a paved road I dont think the natural state is one of staring strait ahead at nothing.
Our youngest was a nightmare on car trips even 20 minutes or less, now she is excited to leave so she can watch some show.
We're more or less relaxed about screen time, especially at weekends, and the huge upside of this is that at six he sometimes now says, well that's enough , I want to do some drawing. From what I understand, the biggest parenting challenge is at 16, and anything that gives them a chance to learn self-discipline, and painfree self-determination, before then has got to be worthwhile.
I once heard anything you waste time doing that you enjoy is not wasted time. I spent a lot of evenings playing zelda as a kid and feel it had a lot of positive impact on my problem solving skills along with the patience of trial and error. Lucky for me my parents didnt care I stayed up all night playing. I can see how that would have played out differently with other parents.