What to put on for a two-year-old

A two-year-old does not follow a story. That sounds harsh and it is the entire point: what works at this age is repetition, a slow pace, and pictures that carry their own meaning. A show that builds a plot over twenty minutes is not too hard for them — it simply goes past.

Roughly in order from quietest to busiest, here is what we have that is made for it.

The quietest

Miffy — Dick Bruna's rabbit, flat colours and almost no incident. Short episodes in which very little goes wrong, which is harder to find than it sounds.

Uki sits next to it: short, wordless, and therefore indifferent to which language is spoken at home.

Naming things

• First words — sixteen videos that name one thing at a time
• Colors — fifteen, same idea
• Animal videos — our largest set for this age at ninety-nine, and the one that holds attention without asking for any

None of this teaches on its own. What makes it worth anything is an adult naming things along with it, which is the finding every screen-time guideline keeps landing on.

Songs and letters

Super Simple Songs is the deepest we hold at eighty-eight, and Mother Goose Club covers the traditional rhymes. ABC KidTV adds another eighty-nine.

Songs are the easiest kind of screen time to stop: there is a natural ending every three minutes, rather than an episode that has to be interrupted.

How much

Most guidance lands near half an hour a day at this age, and none below two. Worth knowing that nearly everything on this page runs under ten minutes — not by accident, but because short and finished is what we select for.