u/HelpNeeded1717

When he’s home (he works M-F 8-6 for two weeks, and then is home full time for the other two weeks each month. So he’s home a lot) the TV is on the entire time, and loud. It’s always YouTube, and it’s usually like 10 minute videos that are constantly changing, constant commercials, sometimes he’s watching reels. At first it didn’t really catch my toddlers attention, but now it does and he sits there and stares at the TV with him, which my husband seems to think is an adorable bonding experience. He also begs for the TV when my husband isn’t home.

His parents are like this and CONSTANTLY have the TV blasting, it’s been like this my husband’s whole life. They sit there and watch those stupid 2 hour “fail compilations.” As he says “I grew up in a TV house.” My husband is also not a good reader (which is why he won’t make even the small compromise of using captions) and I have an inkling that his childhood TV usage contributed to it. I have tried to talk to him many times about the detrimental effects of the constant TV use for our toddler but it hasn’t changed anything. He knows I’m very upset about it, he knows it’s harming our toddlers development, but his special all-day TV time matters the most. I feel like I married Homer Simpson and I’m finding myself angry and overstimulated each day. This morning we woke up, everyone was happy and calm, and he immediately goes and blasts a music video on the TV for him and my toddler to stare at. And then he played the same video again twice… My husband is intelligent, and can be very insightful, but I’m seriously realizing he’s a 45-year-old iPad child. He even needs to have the TV on while he’s watching reels on his phone. It’s starting to disgust me.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can get through to him in order to help my toddler? Maybe some hard-hitting statistics? Or maybe a good video about how TV is harmful to toddlers? Since he so dearly loves his freaking videos. Yes, I should have thought about this before having a baby, but I didn’t, and now my toddler’s development is being affected because of it. I would be really grateful for any advice.