“Screens are completely prohibited, whether in nurseries or with childminders. » Corinne Krausse, president of Camalyon (Lyon association of childminders) was quick to brush aside the bill tabled at the start of the week by two LR deputies. The text aims to regulate the use of screens (phones, tablets and televisions) by children under 3 years old in nurseries and by childminders at home.
Annie Genevard and Antoine Vermorel-Marques want this ban on screens to become an “approval criterion” for early childhood professionals, ensuring that overexposure to screens causes serious developmental delay in young children. The Doubs MP mentions in particular a “decrease in motor skills and disruption of landmarks” as well as “language delays”.
“The child must be bored to create”
“We have already passed the awareness stage,” adds the president of the association launched in 2016, “this proposal does not hold water. Some of our childminders even go hunting for televisions! »
Same observation in several nurseries in Ile-de-France, which prefer to remain discreet. “There are zero screens in nurseries, there never have been. The activities focus more on free play and motor skills. The objective is for the child to discover his environment for himself,” we assure you in a structure in the south of Paris.
“My job is to talk to the child, to awaken him, to make him discover things for himself and to stimulate his imagination. The screens ruin all that. The child must be bored to create,” adds Corinne Krausse. And for this, the president evokes work “through free play and activities”. “Taking an everyday object and introducing it into the child’s environment can be a very good exercise! »
The president of Camalyon also recalls that “each year, the early childhood sector is extremely controlled by the PMI (maternal and child protection) and the RPE (early childhood relay)”. From training in the early childhood sector, or during accreditation renewal, “the two organizations raise awareness of the risks and review the profession”.
“Parenting support”
Moreover, in Lyon, the childminder and her collective have set up exchange workshops between professionals, in which parents can participate. The goal ? “Inform them and show them how they can occupy their children, without screens. »
“With this law, politicians perhaps hope that professionals will make parents more aware of the subject of screens. The fact remains that parenting support is already an integral part of our profession and has been for years. Our role is to alert, guide and direct parents,” continues Corinne Krausse, who has worked with children for twenty-five years.
“After Covid-19, I saw many children develop a delay in motor skills and apprehension of the body. Deficiencies surely proportional to the time they spent in front of screens during this period,” she notes, however. The president of the association is, however, far from throwing stones at parents who, for the youngest often, “put their children in front of screens more easily, and tend to trivialize the risks, because of what they themselves have. same, grown up with technology.”
Added to this is the busy schedule of parents, sometimes alone, where every second counts. “Parental burnout is such that sometimes a few minutes of cartoons can relieve the pressure. »