Help. Toddler watching too much TV

It's hard having two children of a young age. How about getting him involved with taking care of the baby and playing with the baby? Ask him to sing to the baby or talk to the baby. I know it's easier said than done.

That’s a tough one. It’s so hard to reason with 2 year olds. I just got some sand timers⏳ and they have been working pretty well with my toddler. For screen time I often use them for he can watch 10/15 minutes of what he wants and after all the sand is at the bottom I’ll switch it to something more educational. Or when the sand is all at the bottom it’s time to turn it off, that sort of things. Maybe for the always wanting to switch to something else he can have 3 switches, marking them off as he uses them and once he uses them he has to stick with that’s on.
For playing with him you could do, mommy will play with you till the timer is up/can you play by yourself till this timer is up sort of things.
Hope this helps!

I have a 3.5 year old and a newborn I think it’s a phase we as mums to get through the difficult patch of the newborn trenches and when the other one is so little. Just think about it as a time when they are both a bit older it won’t always be like it but if it’s helping you get by the first few months I feel like it shouldn’t matter don’t worry about it, everything will get easier & especially with the weather being rubbish it doesn’t help xx

Turn on music, Spotify (there are stories, music, book reading with a still image on the tv), try a Tonie box (investment, but it's screen free entertainment with the ability to change characters/stories on his own).
Throw Nat Geo on, Price is Right, Wheel of fortune.. He'll get bored and move onto an activity. Sure, there will be a tantrum, but be strong and don't give in. In the end, the behavior is being enabled by the person giving in, and then it's turning into frustration.
Hand him a broom, wipes to clean the windows, balls to toss in a box, Playdoh, colored paper squares on the floor and yell a color for him to jump to it, hide Easter eggs with letters inside and match them up on a paper with the alphabet, sensory box (Battat has a great one!), put cut up straws on pipe cleaners. Idk, just some ideas that don't require much preparation.

We cold turkey’d the tv when our son similar age got used to it in the morning. There were tantrums but we explained before we won’t be doing tv anymore in the morning and since then he gets 20 mins in the evening with milk but with two I can imagine it’s much harder! Timers could work or tv tokens my friend swore by. I think she got some fake tickets or coins and each one represented a certain amount of time or an episode. In terms of the pickiness we went through the same and now just keep it strict like you need to pick within a certain time and then I pick. Again not happy at first but now he gets it. They still learn super quick at this age so it’s painful for like 2/3 days but then is so much better and also he will learn to play much better by himself as well taking the load off you!

I answer his “questions”, I chat to him, I lift him up to show him what I’m doing… but then for example when I’m doing the washing up I put extra bubbles into a plastic jug for him and he runs off to play with it. Definitely not undivided but never ignored x

That is really rough. I am not too far off from where you are if you need to talk. My older is 3 and my younger is 9 months. If it were up to me, we would watch only like an hour of tv a day. Unfortunately that doesn’t work for my family. My husband turns it on when he gets home from work so I try to limit it during the day, but it’s also really hard to get baby down for nap when toddler keeps distracting him. If he is watching it before dad gets home, we only watch slow or educational shows and he gets his fun shows only when daddy is home. You have a couple options in my opinion, 1- wait to deal with it until newborn is a little older and slightly less demanding, 2 set a schedule- we only watch this much tv at this time so he knows what to expect or 3- cut it all out and deal with the detox. I would also suggest trying to have an activity or toys he only gets to play with during nursing time to help distract

Take the tv away from the room - literally no TV.

Puzzles, cooking, build a train set, books, tower building.

Does he have many toys?

If you are struggling put him in nursery for longer. They 100% wouldn’t stick him in front of a tv there.

This will give you time to navigate the newborn stage. My 2.5 year old goes to nursery every day and I’m on mat leave. I couldn’t have them both at home!!! And I refuse to get him addicted to tv

Just don’t turn the tv on. Or put a different show on and suggest this or turning it off? Would he help you with little ‘jobs’ to do instead to keep him busy??