‘Parents should give themselves a break’: the guilt-free children’s TV guide Rebecca Seal There can be few parents who haven’t, in the last 11 months, snapped the television on in desperation, so that it can do a bit of childcare, or bring a temporary halt to the endless requests for food. In the first lockdown, with no formal home-learning to do, my children watched hours of telly, sometimes on iPads, while their father and I attempted to work. And when we weren’t worrying about the pandemic, or money, or everything, we worried about whether it was melting their brains.