Last modified on Mon 8 Mar 2021 05.37 EST
When the first lockdown struck and schools closed, parents suddenly found themselves reassessing their approach to screen time. Their choice was simple: they could either labour on, attempting to piece together a ramshackle Rube Goldberg parenting strategy that kept their children healthy, happy and educated, while maintaining their own obligations to full-time employment, or they could bite the bullet, plonk them in front of the telly and hope their kidsâ brains wouldnât entirely atrophy.
Luckily for me, the decision was taken out of our hands. âI want to watch Numberblocks,â our then five-year-old declared a day or two into his extended break from reception class. He was, of course, referring to a CBeebies series where some cubes sing songs about themselves. How did he know about Numberblocks? Because he watched it at school. And, figuring that if it was good enough for school it was good enough for us, we stuck Number