Like any good student, I swotted up during my first pregnancy. By the time my daughter was born, I had a mini library of titles to equip me with essential baby knowledge, childbearing’s answers to Delia Smith: Your Baby, Week by Week , charting the typical development of a baby during its first six months, or What to Expect: The First Year , which promises “the info you need to get from cooing to crawling and everything in between”. That “everything in between” did not cover the countless blood tests, transfusions and bone marrow disorder diagnosis that came in our first year.
I mean, obviously. After my baby was diagnosed, the manuals were left untouched on the shelf, and for a while, their lightly bent spines taunted me with their normative promises. But in a swoop of self-liberation, I quickly decided that what I read in them, like much parenting advice, did not apply to me.
And it still doesn’t. In early September, for example, Folkhälsomyndigheten, the catchily named Swedish health authority, issued new advice on screens. Children should have zero exposure to them before the age of two, it said, with strict caps on screen time for two to five, six to 12 and 13 to 18 year olds.
“For far too long we have allowed screens and apps to steal time and attention at the cost of what we know is needed to feel well,” said Jakob Forssmed, the minister of social affairs. Now, I am as worried about the negative impact of screens on my children as the next parent, but.