My son turned 3 last month and for the past few months watching TV has turned into a rare privilege because of the way it impacts his behavior. When he was younger, we were pretty casual about TV and watched things like Ms. Rachel, Bluey, dinosaur shows, Elmo, etc. and he would go play on his own after about 20 minutes of watching it. We quickly learned that high stimulus shows were terrible and avoided them. We have a tablet that we have used probably 5x total on plane rides or long car trips.
Now that my son is 3 years old, anything more than 15 minutes of Bluey or maybe a Disney classic movie on the weekend turns him into a total tantrum monster. At this age he can be so glued to the TV. I had another baby 5 months ago, so he definitely watched too much TV for about 2 weeks between the holidays and postpartum. One time I grabbed the tablet to take on a long road trip and he was so fixated on wanting to play it at home while it was charging. I ended up throwing the tablet in the closet and it's never coming back out. We have even experimented with how much TV he watches and his behavior, it was consistent.
Anyways, has anyone else experienced this big shift in behavior driven by screen time around 3 years old? Thankfully he will only ask for a minute about watching something and when I tell him no he will just go play.