Why we quit Cocomelon

Screen time is perhaps one of the biggest shame triggers for today’s parents. So many of us are constantly faced with things that make giving our toddlers our undivided attention pretty much impossible, and when a moment of quiet is needed, turning on the TV is often the easiest and most effective way to keep our kids occupied. Most of us also know that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screens until 2 and that screen time should be limited each day, with specific limits based on age, but for many parents, following those recommendations isn’t always practical, and in some cases, it’s nearly impossible. 

When parents decide to expose their baby to television for the first time, there’s not typically much thought put into what exactly is being shown. I mean obviously there’s a big difference between showing your kid Texas Chainsaw Massacre and showing them Daniel Tiger, but I’d wager that most people pull up Netflix, select the Kids profile, and just pick whatever is most popular. That’s what we did. 

Enter Cocomelon.

I will admit that we used to be huge Cocomelon fans. It kept our toddler entertained which helped us get stuff done. It kept her quiet on long car rides. She was learning songs. She could even identify all the different characters by name at 15 months old. While we obviously knew it was screen time and that screen time should be limited, we thought it was at least a good use of screen time. 

Sure, she’d scream when we turned it off. Sure, it was sometimes the only thing that could stop tantrums. Sure, she’d wake up in the middle of the night sometimes crying for “Coco.” Sure, she’d get up yelling “JJ! JJ!” almost every morning by 5am. But we thought this was all normal toddler stuff. 

My husband and I aren’t typically big TV-watchers (during the day anyway), so our oldest daughter was never really exposed to much screen time until she became more mobile and we started needing to keep her entertained and safe (ya know, since mobile babies have no sense of self-preservation and have a tendency to get into or on top of anything and everything if they aren’t occupied). So when she was around 9 months, we started letting her watch Cocomelon daily. Again, we knew that screen time was not recommended for kids as young as she was, but, hey, we’ve all got to survive. I needed to make dinner. I needed to get work done. I needed something to keep her occupied and out of trouble. I needed time at dinner to talk and connect with my husband without my kid screaming at me. So out came the iPad, and on came the TV.  I knew that these were not sustainable habits, but it seemed like if it was something that we were just doing occasionally, it wouldn’t have too much of an impact. 

By the time our daughter was 15 months, we were able to cut the screens at mealtimes, but throughout the day and during our bedtime routine, it was what we relied on to help keep her occupied and calm (maybe “entranced” is a better word). We couldn’t be in the car for more than 10 minutes without her screaming unless we had Cocomelon playing on one of our phones. We even went so far as to screen record 40 minutes of an episode on one of our iPads so that, on longer car trips, we wouldn’t need to use the internet connection from our phones and there wouldn’t be any ads that she couldn’t skip. It seemed like she couldn’t sit still through a diaper change without Cocomelon on the TV or one of our phones. We couldn’t get her dressed in the mornings or into pajamas at bedtime without it either. It didn’t help that I was pregnant and exhausted and just wanted some peace and quiet throughout the day. To make matters worse, she’d sometimes wake up in the middle of the night demanding to watch Cocomelon, (before you ask, yes, we tried letting her “cry it out,” but she is so strong-willed that she would cry for over an hour until we’d go in and get her) and the only thing that could calm her down was watching “JJ” in our bed until she fell back to sleep eventually. 

Then her screen time went through the roof when the new baby came. Our oldest was 18 months old when her sister was born, so in order to keep her from climbing on the furniture, getting into things she shouldn’t be, or otherwise putting herself in harm’s way while I was nursing, changing, and caring for our new baby, I turned on the TV.  We would try shows other than Cocomelon from time to time (mostly when I felt like I’d literally lose my mind if I had to hear those songs again), but nothing else seemed to keep her happy for too long, so I shrugged and thought, Well, if she likes it, whatever. 

A few months before my daughter would turn two, a friend of mine sent me an Instagram profile, @jerricasannes. Upon first looking at her profile, she seemed a bit…extreme? I mean, I didn’t think it was possible that any kids’ shows could be that bad for a baby. Then I started reading her posts more closely and realized that she was hitting the nail right on the head when it came to my baby and screen time, and more specifically, my baby and Cocomelon.

As I browsed Sannes’s Instagram page, I watched her story highlight titled “Cocomelon,” where she points out that scene changes occur every 2 seconds in most Cocomelon videos. I thought, No way–all of them do that? Honestly, I’d never really sat down and watched it. It was mostly just background noise for me while I got things done. But I looked up multiple different songs, and sure enough, almost every single scene change happens within 2-3 seconds in each video I watched. And after my own mini-experiment, I felt incredibly overstimulated, so I could only imagine what it was doing to my toddler’s much less mature brain.

In her post about Cocomelon, Sannes writes, “​​Cocomelon is so hyper-stimulating that it actually acts as a drug, a stimulant. The brain receives a hit of dopamine from screen-time, and it seems that the stronger the “drug” (aka the level of stimulation a show delivers), the stronger the “hit”. This leads to 1) young children experiencing very real symptoms of addiction and withdrawal, obviously leaving them completely dysregulated, and 2) a general discomfort in the speed of everyday life.” After reading that post, I realized that my toddler was quite literally addicted to Cocomelon and decided we needed to do something about it. 

After seeing that Jerrica Sannes has a website (raisewildflowers.com), I decided to check it out and found that she has a ton of research about screen time linked, the most startling of which links excessive screen time to children presenting symptoms of both autism and ADHD. My children are genetically predisposed to both autism and ADHD, so that convinced me all the more that we needed to make a change with regard to screen time. On Sannes’s website, she also has a FREE TV detox course that takes you through how to replace excessive screen time with unstructured play. My favorite thing about her message is that she recognizes that parents have a lot going on and doesn’t advocate for mothers and fathers to be constantly available to and/or playing with their kids; rather, she instructs parents to “do less” by providing a safe environment that invites unstructured play, which is what we know, from years and years of research, is the way kids learn.

We decided to cut Cocomelon (and other hyper-stimulating shows) out completely, and while the first 48 hours or so were rough, it was so worth it. At first, we weren’t being super stringent on drastically cutting down the amount of time she spent in front of a screen; we were simply cutting out Cocomelon and switching it up with shows like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Bluey, both of which are recommended by Sannes as better shows for kids (you can read about her scoring process here). However, switching to these shows that aren’t highly stimulating worked to also cut down her screen time all together since she wasn’t so hyperfocused on the screen and would wander off away from the TV to go play. Yes, she still had lots of “JJ” tantrums throughout those first weeks, and the first two days especially, but she is now a much calmer and happier toddler. Yes, she still has tantrums and sometimes struggles with transitions, but she’s two, so that’s developmentally appropriate. She does not, however, wake up in the middle of the night or in the very early morning screaming for “JJ!” or “Coco!”. She sleeps better. She’s motivated to play independently. And best of all, she rarely asks for TV at all. 

The skeptic in me told me that maybe some of the positive results like fewer tantrums and better focus were just byproducts of her getting a little bit older, but time after time, I continue to see a correlation between the amount of screen time she gets and the amount of negative behaviors she exhibits. If, for whatever reason, she gets too much TV/screen time on any given day, without fail, she will have multiple tantrums that night and sometimes even into the next day, and she is less motivated to play on her own. We always end up having to do a “detox” of sorts to get her regulated again. 

I have to admit, we don’t follow all of the recommendations in the TV Detox course to the letter, mostly because I don’t have the time, energy, or money to put into buying all “Montessori” toys, but we have created a space that is more inviting for play, and we started a book and toy rotation which has seemed to really help with our daughter’s engagement in independent play. 

I must also be clear that we have not cut out screen time completely, nor is that what Sannes recommends in her course; rather, we’ve replaced overstimulating shows with more high-quality screen time. You can read more about what shows qualify as “high-quality” screen time here, but essentially, you’re looking for natural colors (rather than saturated primary colors), at least 4 seconds between scene changes, and shows without multiple different sounds and effects being used simultaneously. So…pretty much the exact opposite of everything that Cocomelon is. 

Currently, we’ve cut our screen time down to 15-25 minutes a day, most days, and we try to have two completely screen-free days a week. If you asked me a few months ago, I probably would’ve said a screen-free day would be absolutely out of the question if I were going to be able to get anything done, but I’m happy to say it is possible. Your toddler should be playing without the constant need to be entertained by another person or a screen, and setting up the right kind of environment and establishing good screen time habits has helped our toddler be able to do just that. 

My aim in writing this is not to shame parents who do let their little ones watch Cocomelon; rather, it is to show that if you notice a problem and want to try cutting out Cocomelon and/or cutting down on screen time in general to see if it has any positive effect, it can be done. My little Cocomelon addict went from upwards of 3 hours of screen time each day to mere minutes, if any, each day. I’m so proud of how far my girl has come, and cutting down drastically on screen time has really shifted the way in which I see my child– we can connect more meaningfully during quiet times and meals without constant stimulation from a screen, and I’m not constantly anticipating her tantrums when I have to turn the TV off or the iPad dies. 

What started out as a little experiment to see how Cocomelon affected my child turned into a complete lifestyle change that has benefited our whole family. I never could’ve expected to see the kind of change I did in my oldest daughter after simply cutting out a television show. The best part is: it doesn’t take any extra work from me because she’s now playing independently, and she’s learning and growing in the way toddlers are meant to—through unstructured play and exploration.