Children of all ages are constantly learning new things. The first 2 years of life are especially important in the growth and development of your child's brain. During this time, children need good, positive interaction with other children and adults. Too much television can negatively affect early brain development. This is especially true at younger ages, when learning to talk and play with others is so important.
Until more research is done about the effects of TV on very young children, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not recommend television for children age 2 or younger. For older children, the Academy recommends no more than 1 to 2 hours per day of educational, nonviolent programs.
http://www.aap.org/family/tv1.htm
Apparently it was all over the news yesterday that we should stop letting our babies watch ANY TV at all. No Baby Einstein, no Sesame Street, nothing. With all due respect to the experts, I think it's a bunch of hooey. I feel I am qualified to say this as:
- a licensed and certified Speech-Language Pathologist
- a parent of a baby who watches TV
- a former baby who watched TV
My kid loves TV. She is 11 months old. Sometimes in the morning if the TV is off, she points to it, says "On?", looks at me, and does the sign for "please." That is pretty sophisticated stuff for a baby who has suffered from tv-induced developmental neurological damage.
Here's the thing. Once again, we seem to be looking for something to blame for what is actually poor parenting. TV is like everything else. You have to use some common sense. Don't stick your baby in front of the TV all alone and ignore them all day. Don't let them sit around watching Cops and Pants Off Dance Off. But if you need to make dinner, it is not going to hurt them to watch Blue's Clues for 20 minutes while you cook.
The thing that can REALLY negatively affect early brain development is lack of human interaction and stimulation. If you want your baby to learn language, talk to them. It's as simple as that, provided, of course, that they have normal neurological functioning to begin with. Talk about what you are doing. Talk about what they are doing. Talk about the dog across the street. Talk about what Cookie Monster is doing on TV. Read books to them from day one, and tell them about the pictures. Then, give them some quiet time to play by themselves, process things, and learn about the world.
The reason this makes me so mad is that I know that there are some very nice and well-meaning young moms out there who are going to fear that they've scarred their babies for life because they thought Baby Einstein was OK and let them watch it because they didn't know until yesterday the evil it was doing. Now they will take their babies and hightail it out of any place within 100 yards of a television set, wring their hands, and try as hard as they can to undo the damage. What have I done, what have I done!?
I was awake for two hours in the middle of the night thinking about how mad this makes me.
4 comments:
i looked around on that and didn't see the likes of a study or even a reference to one.
i would like to know what they base their claims on.
I tend to lean towards your thoughts, but then again, I don't really know either without eyeballing the research.
I for one don't approve of more than an hour or so a day of TV for our bean. that hour is good for her though. it gives her a chance to calm down and veg out a little after being all excited and screamy. sometimes it is important before she goes to bed. but like you said, moderation.
Tara,
I totally agree!
One of my (and my wife's) beefs with most ''medical'' research is that they neither randomize (in an experimental way), nor adequately ''control for'' other influences -- such as, as you noted, parenting practices.
So, if this edict **is** based on some study, it probably is based on a study that must measures one causal variable (# hours/week of t.v.) and one or two outcome variables (e.g. verbal ability), and draws a conclusion -- **without** (as you note) controlling for other parenting practices. I'd wager that more neglectful parents account for much of the ''over-t.v.-ing'', and if you parse that out, it's actually parenting practices, **not** the t.v. per se, that is related to the low verbal ability (or whatever).
The funny thing is, the other blog that I regularly read -- Wil Wheaton -- was also related to over-t.v.-ing -- although it was more towards kids older than toddlers. http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2007/05/geek_in_review__1.html
--GG
I take umbrage with this statement:
"One of my (and my wife's) beefs with most ''medical'' research is that they neither randomize (in an experimental way), nor adequately ''control for'' other influences -- such as, as you noted, parenting practices."
I would hope that 'most' legitimate medical studies control for other variables. Or, if they are not controlled for, that is stated in the disussion of the study. At least that has been my experience participating in medical research for the past 3 years.
So, and I think this was your point, the real question is what the source of these claims are based on. was it ad-hoc research done by this organzation who maybe had an ax to grind? Or was it a good study done by scientists and professors and published in a reputable journal?
I found no evidence for either, which makes me call into question all the claims. Like you said, it could be that some group simply recorded hours of T.V. watched and tested the kids on somekind of verbal scoring doohicky and tried to show a causal relations betwixt the two, which I would think would not be taken seriously by any group of social scientists or peditricans.
end diatribe.
Fooie,
Well, it depends... ;)
My area is Sociology. My impression is that all disciplines have ''blind spots''. For example, Education researchers tend to be fairly loose on what they're using for their outcome measure for ''educational success'': standardized reading scores? End-of-semester grades?
Similarly, Criminologists (not the forensic ones, but the ones from a social science background) tend to sum the counts of a bunch of different types of crime, in order to make a total ''offending'' score -- e.g. person #1's three shoplifting events = ''3'', as does someone with a shoplifting, a burglary, and a carjacking -- which, in effect, weights all these different offenses equally.
It's probably become better in the last ten(?) years or so, but assuming ''Hey - the human body works the same for everyone!'' is the traditional blind spot for medical-oriented research. Particularly because it comes from an experimental paradigm, it's used to randomizing taking care of all other influences (which it does) -- but when it uses survey data or post-hoc medical records, then this oversight fails to account for possible alternative explanations.
And some psychological/child development research -- because it comes from the same tradition -- shares this oversight.
OTOH, this is just my impression -- which could also be 10-20 years out of date. But the medical/ developmental research I **have** looked up often [but not always] has the holes I just mentioned.
And I **am** pleased if the medical research you've been involved with indeed controls for these things, esp. if it's done in a multivariate manner, rather than just one or two other factors (e.g. gender, former heart attack = yes/no).
The other problem is that in all disciplines, there's a huge range of quality of research journals: some are more stringent than others in the papers they accept, while others basically accept [almost] any cheeseball thing that's submitted. Those in the field [whatever the relevant field may be] know which ones are more rigorous than others. Unfortunately, journalists often don't.
Thus, when a paper gets published in the Kansas City Journal of Child Development, and the authors send a press release out, the findings get taken as gospel truth. But, it ain't nesc. so.
Anyhoo, that's my take on things. :)
And... we'll see whether Tara regrets having said anything about this whole subject. ;)
--GG
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