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It would annoy me too. LO is only 20 months and doesn't get much, if any screen time, and I really try to limit it to rare occasions (like, if she wakes up before 5 and I'm solo-parenting, or at the end of the day and she's burnt out but it's too early to go to sleep, like before 6, or if there's something we want to watch while she's awake, like sports). It's not so much that the screen time itself bothers me, but that if she watches a little, she wants it on all the time...

Yep for sure!! He only has one hour to entertain him, you have like, 10+? I'm sure. I'm not a morning person either... but sometimes parenting sucks. Like at 6:30 in the morning. He needs to adapt

Nope it wouldn't annoy me at all. Maybe I'm a lazy parent too because on weekends I'll put on the tv for DS1 so that I can get extra rest. As long as he is tending to him as needed for snacks or drinks or something, I don't see the big deal. But I also don't think screen time is awful or ruins my kids. I'd be happy that I don't have to wake up!!

A little, but I use TV in the mornings too, it's our "reward" for getting dressed, brushing teeth/hair without a fight. Does he help L get ready in the mornings or is strictly straight to couch?

I would not be pleased with the TV being used as the automatic babysitter. However, I'd want to further explore why he feels he needs that hour and the alternatives. What happens at 7:30 am? What could be done in the first hour? If you were up with your son what would you do instead?

@babynumber1: "Although, I can tell you my DH's response would be that if I didn't like it, I can get up with LO. So I wouldn't say anything unless you want to get up." -- I have this same issue with afternoon TV. DH picks up LO and puts her in front of the TV after school. Drives me bonkers but I don't want to fight over it.

The thing that gets me is kids that age love to play and can play independently in the morning. Why not just go downstairs and let him play while he lays on the couch, instead of turning on the TV?

if you guys are limiting screen time to a certain amount (and it sounds like you are), i think the priority of using it goes to you, who stays home with the kiddos all day. absolutely.

husband and i both WOH and he tends to stay up later because of work/night owl tendencies--but if we can do mornings without tv, i'm positive your husband can too. i mean that as an encouragement, not a criticism. i know it's daunting to change the routine and have to be "on" with your active toddler first thing in the morning, but i bet after a week or so, it will become second nature.

I have mixed feelings. Ideally, I want want him to go to bed earlier so he has more energy to read to DS or something in the morning. However, I get it- I was extremely sick for 3 months and DH had to watch DD at night (when I was the most sick), and she watched WAY too much screentime. Since DH was helping out, I figured I had to take what I could get and he had to do what he had to do. Since he was helped me I didn't want to... beggars can't be choosers, I thought. I talked to him about it eventually and he changed. I am also feeling better so it is no longer an issue.

@hilsy85: I think what you are saying is one of the fundamental differences between mothers and fathers. As moms I think we feel the need to do more and interact more and always entertain our kids. Dads don't feel like that and they don't have any guilt for it. In general I also feel that dads are more laid back than moms. We feel the need to control even when we aren't the ones there. I learned (and more so as we added kids and my DH did more) that sometimes it is 100 times easier to just let it go.

Could he do some other things like getting his breakfast ready/letting him eat, giving him toothbrush, read at least one book to cut down on the screen time, so maybe it's more like 30min? Those are the usual pretty easy morning tasks that keep LO occupied around our house.

ETA: DH stays up much later than me - between pregnancy and toddler I just can't keep the hours I used to (we used to both regularly stay up to midnight); staying up of your own accord isn't an out at our house for parenting except in rare occasions like he had a night out with the guys.

@Mamasig: Sometimes I worry about how much women are exhorted to "let it go" re: their spouses and children. My experience is that women frequently pick up the slack themselves, and resentment builds. But nagging doesn't fix the problem either, because no-one responds well to being nagged or criticized. I think it is ok for both parents to have solid bottom lines (aka, 1 hour TV time), but they have to take responsibility for enforcing those bottom lines if they are important to them. But it seems like women tend to take on all tasks as if they were equally important, and then get burned out when they have no help with this. I think the OP needs to decide how important this is to her, and adjust her life accordingly. If I were the OP, I'd tell my husband, ok, I'm going to take this task on...but from now on you're doing your own laundry, etc., because it gives me back 1 hour in my day and, after all, it is your laundry. Basically not just "letting it go" but also becoming more like a man by not taking everything on themselves. (This is assuming that all men are "like that"...I don't think this is the case, actually, I think they are largely socialized to be like this...)

Re-reading this I think what I mean is that women can become "codependent" on the (so-called) incompetence of their spouses....

@hilsy85: I totally understand what you mean about differing standards of cleanliness. So a few months ago I "released" the job of cleaning the kitchen to my husband. And sometimes it gets ROUGH (I'm attaching a picture). I try my very best not to nag him (don't always do the best at this...clean counters are my "thing"), and he does it in his own time. Sometimes it takes DAYS. But I did find that the satisfaction of seeing my husband take on this chore that I used to struggle to do has far outweighed my frustration in the state of my kitchen.

My husband used to be really defensive in conversations like this, and with a lot of work he is so much better. For example, I used to nag my husband to death and nowadays I just set a bottom line in a non-insulting way and I promise not to nag or remind. "This will happen or X will happen." And I don't remind him or give him an unrealistic timeline, I just tell him what to look out for (example: "It has been two months since my grandmother sent you a birthday $$....can you please send her a thankyou note this week or I'm going to call her and thank her on your behalf next week.") He responds super well to really concrete expectations. I will be SAHM full time starting next year and I told him I could probably handle the kitchen again and he was like, NO WAY. You're never doing the kitchen again. He can tell my resentment level is so much lower and I am much nicer to be around at night, so it is worth it to him!

BTW I will probably take the kitchen pic down soon because it is kinda embarrassing!

Wow this is a tough situation. I love the advice you have gotten so far.

I don't have much to add but for me I personally wouldn't be bothered by this because I would feel he was doing me a favor by taking LO for that hour and whatever he wanted to do during that time is fine by me as long as he making sure LO wasn't running amok. Haha. I feel like I'm a lazier parent in these boards though so I can understand where you are coming from too.

I don't know.. I kind of think that right now with a newborn and a 3 yo anything goes. Not that you need to throw all of your parenting rules out the window, but if getting an extra hour of screen time in the morning means more sleep for you and DH, I don't think the trade off is too big. Maybe you can talk to him about making changes in the future once dd is sleeping through the night or asking him to try and go to bed one hour earlier even just once a week. But I personally try not to be critical of DH when he is taking over intentionally to give me a break because I would want him to do the same for me! Also, my mom was a SAHM and after I was born (my sister is 2 years older) she said the only chance she ever got to sleep was when she locked all 3 of us in the basement family room and turned on the smurfs. I don't think there's anything wrong with that!

@hilsy85: My 2nd LO is 7 months and right about when he was 3 months old I started to realize that I didn't want to keep heading in the same direction we'd been going, with me nagging and saying things I regretted and him stonewalling. We used to have a lot of conflict, though. I am a hardcore pursuer and he is a hardcore distancer. In the area of home life I was a hardcore overfunctioner and he was a hardcore underfunctioner, but we've evened out (although not this time of the year; I'm like a crazy person around Christmas....the rest of my house is neat as a pin at the moment because I stress clean). You haven't mentioned any discord so I'm assuming that you guys probably don't fight as much as we did!

I will say that pic is a little unusual because I've been doing some holiday baking, so the kitchenaid and the crock pot were both in play, lol. But yeah, it is like that more than I'd like to admit