There’s an advert on TV at the moment showing a toddler crying on the bus with a worn out looking mum at her wit’s end trying to console her son whilst everyone around tuts and shakes their head.  Eventually a young couple sitting behind them offer their tablet for the young boy to watch a children’s TV programme. Everyone on the bus is overjoyed as he is finally quiet. A lot of my friends love this advert but it divides my opinion. Call me old fashioned but I just don’t like the end to the story; plug a child into a screen and everyone’s quiet and happy.  Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t want Aurora to grow up to be a technophobe and occasionally desperate times call for desperate measures. However I want her to be able to find ways to entertain herself without relying on technology for entertainment.  ‘Only boring people get bored’ my grandma used to say which would infuriate me. Now here I am trying to instil the same values into my one year old!

It has worked to a certain extent. She will now happily play in her room for 15 minutes at a time sifting through books from under her bed and playing her xylophone. She even spent forty-five minutes enthralled with emptying her toy box the other day whilst I baked a cake (for those without kids this is a minor miracle).  So when it came to the hour and a half train journey to see family last weekend I thought nothing of it. Time to put my theory into practice.

I strategically packed an array of snacks I knew would take her ages to polish off and three of her favourite books and some teddies.

When on the train we spent time looking out the window, pointing out trees and people, incessantly pulling the table down and up and using it as a drum, peeping and giggling at fellow passengers and walking up and down the aisle. This seemed too easy!  Just fifteen minutes later she had eaten all her snacks, we’d read all three books twice and she was now bored with her teddies. I was running out of ideas when the high pitched tantrum screams of a frustrated Aurora started.  To add fuel to the fire she was overdue her afternoon nap and in all the excitement was now one very over-stimulated, tired little baby. I was determined not to use my phone to quieten her and opted to hold her tight, let her fight, kick and scream for five minutes and hope she’d eventually give in and fall asleep.  Granted a packed train on a Friday afternoon wasn’t the ideal time. I now felt the full wrath of the poor mum on that bus. No one offered their tablet though, just tuts and looks of ‘can’t you just shut your baby up?’. She fell asleep in my lap five minutes before we arrived. I then had to negotiate my way down the aisle carrying her books, teddies, empty snack bag and changing bag whilst trying not to bump into people, trip on her blanket which was now trailing on the floor or wake the 19lb floppy baby in my arms.

I had an image of me on the train with two children at some point in the future. Now that definitely wouldn’t be for the faint hearted. Ask me then if I’d use a screen to entertain my children and I would probably have a very different view.