What we teach children when we feed them in front of a screen
Feeding children with the TV on has become normal. Sometimes it starts as a one-off. A busy day. A tired evening. A child who won’t eat otherwise. And before long, it becomes routine — meals paired with cartoons, tablets or phones.
Most parents don’t do this because they don’t care. They do it because it works. The plate gets emptied. There’s less resistance. Less mess. Less negotiation. In the short term, it feels like a solution. The problem is what it teaches.
Eating without noticing
When a child eats in front of a screen, their attention is elsewhere.
They don’t notice hunger arriving.
They don’t notice satisfaction passing.
They don’t notice fullness.
They eat as long as the distraction lasts. Over time, eating stops being a response to the body and becomes a background activity, something that happens to them rather than something they participate in.
That pattern doesn’t disappear with age. Adults who struggle with overeating often aren’t greedy or undisciplined. They are disconnected. They learned early on to eat past signals, because nothing taught them to listen.
The Sunnah assumes presence
The Sunnah around food assumes something we rarely talk about: presence.
Saying Bismillah.
Sitting to eat.
Eating with the hands.
Stopping before fullness.
All of these practices require attention. You cannot do them properly while distracted.
The Prophet ﷺ did not eat in a hurry, nor did he eat while mentally elsewhere. Meals were moments, not background noise.
That doesn’t mean every family meal needs to be silent or solemn. Conversation is part of eating. But distraction that removes awareness entirely is different.
“But otherwise they won’t eat”
This is the part parents rarely say out loud. Many children will eat more, or eat at all, when the TV is on. And that’s exactly the issue.
When food is paired with distraction, children learn that eating requires entertainment. Hunger alone is no longer enough. The body’s signals are overridden by external stimulation. Eventually, food becomes something to fill time, soothe boredom or accompany screens, not something to respond to.
This doesn’t teach moderation. It teaches endurance.
Long-term habits are built early
Children who eat with constant distraction often:
struggle to recognise fullness
eat faster than they realise
snack continuously
associate food with reward or comfort
None of this is intentional. It’s learned. And it’s far easier to establish awareness early than to relearn it later.
Mindfulness doesn’t start with lectures. It starts with attention.
Presence is more important than perfection
This isn’t about banning screens forever or creating rigid rules. It’s about what becomes normal.
Even one intentional meal a day — without screens, eaten slowly, begun with Bismillah — teaches something different. It tells a child: this moment matters. They learn that eating has a beginning and an end. That hunger passes. That stopping is allowed. Those lessons last.
The easier choice isn’t always the kinder one
Feeding children with the TV on makes the moment easier. But parenting isn’t only about getting through moments, it’s about shaping habits that outlast them.
Islam doesn’t ask us to raise perfect eaters. It asks us to raise aware ones.
Awareness requires space. Space requires discomfort, at least at first. But what children gain in return is something far more valuable than a quiet meal: a relationship with food that isn’t built on distraction.
What we normalise becomes their baseline
Children don’t remember instructions. They remember patterns.
When screens are always present, eating without them feels strange. When meals are rushed, slowing down feels unnatural. When fullness is ignored, excess feels normal.
The Sunnah doesn’t shout these lessons. It models them. And like most things in parenting, the question isn’t whether something works today, but what it teaches for tomorrow.
