Opinions on the dancing fruit for babies?

Hello everyone, first time posting, but I wanted to get other mother’s opinions on the dancing fruit videos. Our family loves the dancing fruit videos, it has helped so much for our daughter since she was around 5 months old. But nowadays in my feed and also my husband’s, we keep getting videos on how watching too much of the dancing fruit, especially before 6 months, supposedly causes autism? I’m like a big over-thinker usually, but all the symptoms/results of this are almost in line with her behavior today. Should I be concerned? Any suggestions or opinions are welcome please! 🙏🏼

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No for us. I dont like watching my child stare at floating objects on a screen when I could be encouraging learning

Autism is not something you can cause post birth, it’s a condition you are born with. It could however impact little ones concentration levels.

Autism is genetic. I used to put on dancing fruit when I needed to get something done, and would say it’s ok in moderation. I wouldn’t put it on for longer than 15 minutes at that age, but not judging any others than do.

It won’t cause autism but it’s beneficial to limit or have no screen time for babies. It can help with their attention span, language and memory skills etc. if you don’t want to cut it out completely then recommend keeping it to the bare minimum of a few minutes

We used the dancing fruit for the music but not the visual stimulation, it's just not great to encourage screen viewing that young in general. We didn't show the TV to him purposefully until 9 months and did research on non-stimulating screen time as opposed to the dancing fruit which are purposefully stimulating

the autism thing is bs. but i don’t think it’s something you should put on all the time, only when you really need it to get stuff done. it’s just mindless

We used alternatives in the moments where I was feeling overwhelmed. And I used to put on any video by Lucky Baby Star (my LO loved the dinos one haha), instead of dancing fruit or veggies or hey bear because I read that they’re more stimulating for the baby and lucky baby star is a bit more chill and low stimulating. HOWEVER YOU DO YOU! my sister in law loves dancing fruit and she swears by them whatever feels right for YOU and YOUR BABY x

The Dancing fruit videos are great if your baby is interested in it why take it away? and on the autism regard yes it is real but nowadays if you breathe wrong your autistic… i wouldn’t worry too much about it momma it’s just your baby figuring out the world and finding what she likes don’t think to much into it!

It won’t cause autism! We swore we wouldn’t be TV parents but our little one hated tummy time and would refer to the fruit video frequently but around 6 months he started having a lot of issues around screen time and we cut it out completely which changed a lot for us. We reintroduced on and off when he became mobile just to be able to function and the behaviors came back immediately. If you have a little one who needs stimulation like ours I recommend light up music toys. We have a version of the Fisher piano floor matt and have been using it since he was two months and he still plays with it to this day. Better than screen time and promotes exploration as they’re able to do that more.

@Amelia please link, I’d be interested to read it :)

I heard about the dancing fruits, but then I started reading/seeing that it could potentially do more “harm” than good so I never showed them to her.

The thing is that genetics are proved to cause ASD, whereas no studies have actually proved that ASD is caused by screens. There is a higher incidence of children with ASD also watching screens but this may be due to other factors, such as ASD causing social difficulties, and a higher focus on screen time to help regulate. As always, it’s recommended that screen time is kept a minimum, but I wouldn’t worry about 10 mins daily causing ASD, nothing has proved this.

Screen time can cause ASD-like symptoms, but not ASD itself!

I’m not sure why the NHS clearly states “autism is something you’re born with” if this hasn’t been proven. Environmental factors play a role but these are those such as advanced parental age, preterm birth/weight, birth complications, exposure to pollutants or chemicals in pregnancy. There is also lots of new research to show that it’s not caused by screens and this is misunderstood 🤷🏻‍♀️

As someone who’s gone to school for this kind of stuff and engaged in research I think it’s a matter of predisposition and nature vs nurture. As in, certain environmental factors can enhance the ability of an autism diagnosis if there is a predisposition to it. However autism is a very subjective spectrum based disorder therefore even diagnosis isn’t always accurate since early development is subjective and typically most kids are diagnosed under the age of 10. There are many diagnoses that mimic autism so I don’t think research can be entirely accurate given the current knowledge society has of autism. My son isn’t even a year and a half old yet and has early signs and was just recommended to be evaluated for early intervention services for speech. I worked in childcare for years and also work with youth now and the amount I see misdiagnosed is unreal.