Helper: Children should not watch TV for hours. But…what if the Dodgers are in the World Series?

Around this time of year, almost every morning before breakfast, my 2.5-year-old wakes up, calls me into his room, and looks into my teary eyes to ask, “Watching baseball?” He wants to watch the highlights of yesterday’s game before going to daycare. After school, he likes to get a quesadilla at a place where we can watch superheroes Mookie Bates, Keiki Hernandez and his idol Shohei Ohtani perform miracles on the field.

My kid is a total baseball fan, and as the Dodgers are back in the World Series, I’m wondering if letting him watch these long games on the screens will screw up his brain like most parents’ tic-tac-toe.

I know these are not good resources, so I contacted the experts.

First: Emily Oster, an economist turned parenting sage whose advice is in the data. Her books and site, ParentData, shed light on many issues before and after my son’s arrival. Can he tell me if watching sports counts as bad screen time?

“I’m not advocating that screen time is good or bad; it’s a useless framework for most parents,” Oster said, downplaying my theory a bit. “Instead, we like to think about screen time with frames opportunity cost: What else will my child do?

He says that guardians should consider whether screen time interferes with social activities, relaxation or other developmental needs: “If your child is watching ‘Cocomelon’ for nine hours a day, they don’t have time for other things: eating, sleeping and going to school.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time from birth to age 2, excluding video calls with family and friends, and no more than one hour per day from ages 2 to 5.

Dr. Marianne Williams, of the Early Childhood Mental Health Program at Children’s Hospital LA, has a different approach. Scrolling devices, such as phones and tablets, are the kind of worrisome screen time: “Something that a child can do all by themselves, and it’s fun and they have a hard time getting out of it.”

Television, on the other hand, can be social with the help of parents. “What happens on the screen is important, but what happens in the room may be more important,” says Williams. My son can be a case study. I’m always happy when Bates gets to a base on first, so now when my son gets down, he simply says “clean” as if he’s trying to convince the umpire that his steal was legal.

This active experience is what differentiates shared television viewing from passive viewing, says Tracy Elizabeth, a developmental psychology and tech leader who manages TikTok’s family safety and developmental health team. When we’re together, she says, my son doesn’t just watch Teosquer Hernandez hitting home runs. He really sees me. “He’s learning about you and how to relate to your family,” says Elizabeth. My son still talks about the time Ohtani was hit twice by a Padres pitcher’s ball in the same game. “Ohtani got hit too,” he would say when I explained why he shouldn’t hit me in the face with a spatula.

While shared viewing helps frame children’s experiences, many experts agree that not all screen content has teachable moments. According to Dr. Jeanne Tavief Asher, director of pediatric neurology at Cedars-Sinai, commercials can be a real threat to young audiences because they are quick to grab and hold our attention. “Children’s brains are wired for this rapid movement,” she said, “which causes unwanted wiring in their brains to grow faster.” Fortunately, it’s easy enough to mute or turn off ads.

In contrast, baseball moves slowly and deliberately. Baseball speed can actually help create attention, some experts said.

Regardless of any official recommendations, we parents know that sharing special time with your little one is an important consideration. At least one expert backed me up on this: “For parents, it’s important to learn when to break the rules,” Williams said. “And when your home team plays in the World Series, it’s one of those times.”

So when the next game in the series started, I had a decision to make.

“It’s Dodger baseball time,” I told my kid in my best Wayne Scully voice. I was sure that some baseball wouldn’t make his brain guacamole, and I had a plan for how we would interact. However, he sees i did And I play with my favorite old lady and make dumb jokes. So we curled up on the couch and watched Ohtani and the gang take the field. And my son was excited.

We sent videos back and forth to my brother’s Blue Jays love family in Toronto. I muted the ads. We talked, and we would play baseball together. And it was amazing. I may have made the right call, and who knows: maybe this moment will be a game-changer for my son’s brain development.

And as it turns out, it was really just a moment. After 30 minutes, he turned to me with a request: “Can we see ‘Daniel Tiger’?”

Drew Tewksbury is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. He is writing a book about expert advice on how to be a better father.