Help my son is a telly addict!

The title of this post is very misleading, as I'm not actually making a cry for help. Everyday, mainly through social media, I hear mothers asking 'Am I an ok mum?' I want to put my approach out there, as an answer: 'probably, yes!'

One of the big issues is about how many hours of TV per day young children should watch. I love the use of 'hours per day' which suggests that every day is the same with a toddler. This completely disregards those days which come at you out of nowhere. Things like teething, colds, teething-colds, growth spurts, days when they only want to eat, days when they won't eat anything, days when they randomly wake up at 4am even though they went to bed at 7.30pm.

This last one has been our life for a couple of weeks now. It's probably to do with teething but it's been rubbish. We've tried earlier bed times, later bed times, just putting him to be when falls over and the 4.30am wake time remains.

As a result of waking up at the rubbish hour, I now have a chest infection, which means that B and I have been sitting on the sofa like muppets for the last 5 days. B hasn't been himself, he has a little cough and cold too and the NHS website says that wee ones (and big ones) who have viral infections should rest.

The way, I get my active toddler to take a load off is to whack on a Disney movie. When we have a normal tired afternoon we watch a movie and he loves them. We've even spent one especially rainy Sunday in the cinema. This week, it's gotten a bit out of hand however. He's watched:

• Tangled x 4
• The Iron Giant
• Ice Age
• Meet the Robinsons x 2.5
• The Lion King x 2 
• Night at the Museum x 3
• Night at the Museum 2
• Enchanted
• The Illusionist x 2

The poor kid looks exhausted but still I'm at war with myself for not encouraging him move around more. He just wants to cuddle up next to me and as I feel like crap myself, I'm ok with that. 

I wouldn't like to count how many hours of TV B has watched on average, per day, this week but as soon as he's feeling better we'll be back down the park, at toddler groups or at soft play all day. 

What's more, movies are a passion of J's and mine and we're excited that B can share this with us. Neither of us are overweight, we have perfectly adequate social stills, though we do both work in marketing...bit nobody's perfect. 

I think we'll watch The Little Mermaid next!