"I would like to poll you all on how you moms feel about the recent news stories that say movies and kids shows, like baby einsteins for example don't help kids but they actually do more damage long term. Personally I don't agree, and I will tell you why. I let my daughter (age2) watch them and not only does she really enjoy it but she repeats the words they say on the TV all the time. Besides baby einsteins she watches other shows and sings along with the words in the songs. I know that all kids are different and I think that the way people learn has a lot to do with these recent findings. I am just wondering if I am alone in this or what you all think?"-Laura
Here is a story published by CBS news on the study:
Kids who watch more than two hours of television per day may be more likely than other children to have attention problems as teens.
That news appears in September's edition of the journal Pediatrics.
The finding comes from a study of more than 1,000 children born and raised in New Zealand. First, psychologists tested and rated the children's attention at age 3 and 5 years. When the kids were 5-11 years old, their parents reported how much TV the children watched on weekdays. When the kids were 13 and 15, they reported their own weekday TV time.
On average, the kids watched about two hours of TV per weekday from ages 5-11, and they watched an extra hour of weekday TV as teens. Any adolescent attention problems were noted by the teens themselves, as well as their parents and teachers.
Watching more than the average amount of TV, in childhood or adolescence, was linked to teen attention problems, regardless of attention problems in early childhood. The study doesn't prove that TV wrecks children's attention.
The researchers - who included Carl Erik Landhuis, B.A., and Robert John
Hancox, Ph.D., of New Zealand's University of Otago - couldn't control for all possible influences on the children's attention. But Landhuis, Hancox, and colleagues note two theories about TV and children's attention.
"One explanation targets brain development in early childhood," write the researchers. That is, that watching television influences children's brain development.
"Another explanation is that life as it is portrayed on television, with its fast-paced editing and attention-grabbing techniques, makes reality seem boring by comparison," the researchers write. "Hence, children who watch a lot of television may become less tolerant of slower-paced and more mundane tasks, such as school work."
The study doesn't show what types of programs the kids watched, so it's not clear whether TV shows' content makes a difference. The data also doesn't cover kids' TV time before age 5.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which publishes the journal Pediatrics, recommends that children younger than 2 get no "screen time," which includes TV and videos. The AAP also advises limiting older kids to no more than two hours of quality TV and videos per day.
By Miranda Hitti
18 comments:
Hey Laura, I share your opinion on this!! I think that shows like Dora and Blues Clues, as well as many other great movies for kids, help contribute to their learning at an early age.
I don't think that the results of the study are accurate and wonder how the people that conducted this study can come to the conclusions that they did??
I don't agree with sitting a child in front of the TV all day though. I think that parents need to keep children active and try a limit their TV time to 2-3 hours a day...although I am guilty of letting them watch 2 movies back to back on a hectic day...
Personally I dont think that babies and toddlers benefit from watching any tv at all, its mostly about mom getting a couple minutes to do things here and there.
The only time Kryllen watches tv here is on weekend mornings when he gets up, I'll bring him in our room and let him watch a bit of tv so I can lay in bed a bit longer and it gives us time to just cuddle in bed.
My husband is adhd and I strongly suspect that the amount of tv he has watched as a child is to blame therefore I'm trying to do what I can to limit it in our house.
i was actually reading a study about this in my developmental psyc book tonight! they did a study of children with regards to watching sesame street one group watched frequently and one not so frequently. the group of children who did want frequently 4 times a week approx. actually improved their cognitive skills and language! and a great deal too. the group that watched infrequently did not show any improvement. that being said i think as long as it is educational and interactive there isn't a problem.
i actually haven't heard of the study until just now... but i have no problems letting my daughter who is 21 months old watch certain shows and movies once and a while. she like dora and adores Curios George.. we don't actually get any channels so her tv time is limited to the dvd's. she may get on average of a hour of tv time a day.. but she does not watch tv every day, sometimes she goes a week or more with out watching any form of tv.
she is VERY smart and very talkative some of it (i'm almost positive) is from watching shows. she started talking fairly early and has developed very well with limited tv time. and though tv may not have had nothing to do with her development it certainly didn't do anything to harm it. she is also a normal toddler who is neither overly active or overly calm.
This study HAS caused a lot of uproar, Julie Clark, the creator of the baby einstein movies has had her property vandalized and has been yelled at in public over this.
Personally I think it's a vague study conducted by a bunch of doctors who have been saying the same things since shows like sesame street came out! Don't let you baby or toddler watch TV no matter what the content is. I thikn that it is absurd. If a kid sees a big furry red monster saying the letter "a" they will likely want to say it to. If they see a cute puppet dancing to Mozart, they dance too. They DO learn from these sorts of shows. If these Doctors and professors really want to help, they should not try and target things that WORK.
I think that letting your kids watch TV is fine as long as it's educational. It lets your kid know that mommy is not crazy and repeating the same letters and numbers over and over to them, because other people and characters say them too. Your kid might think hey thats what my mom just said to me 5 times in a row an hour ago.
I personally don't see how a television show can replace good old-fashioned talking, reading and well, interacting with others as a child's formative learning experiences.
Baby Einstein and similar companies geared toward stimulating infants' cognitive growth are fine, if you take them for what they are: primarily babysitting devices. (And, yes I've been guilty of this on occassion at five am!)
Sure, babies find them entertaining, even mesmerizing (I've recently heard these DVD's referred to as "Baby Crack!"), but come on! I'd rather my girls learn from interacting with their environment and from actual, not virtual experiences and people. Just my humble opinion though.
On a final note, has anyone seen the Baby E electronic books, which "read" to your child so you don't have to????
We're one of those families who have the TV on all day whether we sit and watch it or not. While my children aren't sitting watching TV all day, it is on all day and certain shows or parts of shows catch their attention and they do watch (well, my oldest...my baby is only 3 months). Anyway, I agree with the moms who have said that TV can teach them things if it's interactive and educational. For instance, there is a show on the Treehouse network called Roll Play where the kids are encouraged to act out a story with the children on the TV. They get them to jump and run and it gets quite active. My son LOVES that one. And then other shows that encourage them to solve problems and other things are great, in my opinion. My 2 year old has picked up on a lot of language skills as well as other things from TV. As a parent, I think it's important to reinforce what they learn and bring it into everyday life. I don't buy into the "TV causes ADHD" theory at all.
I always thought that ADD/ ADHD was genetic...
ADD/ADHD can be genetic but not always, tv teaches them to have a very short attention span ( image changing every so many seconds) which leads to add/adhd
even though some things are genetic it can be there but only be triggered by environment sometimes..
i dont buy into the tv and adhd studies either though...
I think that if your child spends hours a day in the company of a TV instead of interacting with their natural environment - it cannot be a good thing. I will allow a little TV but I would say on average less then 5 minutes a day. Occasionally I will put on a Baby Einstein DVD but after 10 minutes my daughter, who is 10 months old has had enough of it. Personally, I thought that the DVD's would be great for her - I have lots of friends who swear by them for soothing and relaxing their little ones - but I find them visually to be very busy and almost dizzying. If it is background noise you're looking for turn on the radio. My daughter gets a kick out of me dancing and singing along with the cheesy songs that come on at the 80's lunch hour. Whether the links to ADHD are accurate or not TV should be limited - there is so much more to stimulate your child with. I don't want my kids to become coach potatoes as they get older...I think starting a healthy, active lifestyle from the early beginnings of life will have lifelong benefits. Sure a baby may learn their basic vocabulary a little earlier but the vast majority of children all reach these milestones with or without a TV prompting them. My eight year old still only watches a half hour of TV per day and she reached all her cognitive milestones very early and has become much more advanced than her classmates in reading, writing, and math. I am not an expert and certainly only speaking from my experience...so do what works best for you and your little ones.
I don't think that the fact that the TV is on all day is a problem. My children don't sit and watch TV all day and the fact that it's on all day has certainly not stifled their interest in other things or started them in the ways of a sedentary lifestyle. My 2 year old knows his ABCs, can count to 20, knows colors and shapes, makes up stories and songs and dances and has an extremely vivid imagination so obviously having the tv on all day isn't hurting him. He still loves to explore outside and play with his toys and especially read books.
I think that a child will benefit more from singing, talking, and playing etc. with a real person rather than a machine. That said, a little TV here and there isn't going to kill anyone.
Some of you seem to be suggesting that watching lots of tv is a great thing for children, but let's be honest, are we turning it on for them or for ourselves? Do you really believe that this is actually beneficial to your child in the long run or is it just a lot easier than to have to entertain them yourself? Don't get me wrong, I do it too so I'm not judging. I just think we need to be honest and re-evaluate our motives so we can make better decisions.
Your child may learn to repeat things he or she heard on tv and it may seem like this is a good thing, but they are getting used to having constant visual and auditory stimulation so how are they going to focus on reading a book or sitting in a quiet classroom for 50 minutes? I teach university and it is getting harder and harder to keep students' attention for any duration of time. I use technology, visual aids, etc. but it's not enough because I can't compete with tv or the Internet. Guess I could make everything into song and start wearing flashy costumes and have a band playing in the background with amazing light shows and special effects...
Let's face it, our babies may seem smarter, but our high school graduates are doing very poorly compared to kids in other provinces. Something is wrong. Bad habits get formed early.
TV is not going to disappear from our society. It has become an integral part of our culture for better or for worse. But let's take a hard look in the mirror once in a while and then turn off the tube and go take a walk outside. Why do we need reality shows when we have the real thing?
Ok, I'll bite...so let's say we turn off the tv completely and now we are sitting down entertaining our children. We are talking to them (auditory stimulation), playing with them (tactile stimulation), reading books (visual stimulation), signing songs (auditory stimulation), etc etc etc. I guess I don't see how constant auditory and visual stimulation is a bad thing...
Well, there are times when your child should not be visually or auditorily stimulated (ie, nap time, quiet time, etc.). But otherwise, you're right of course, stimulating a baby is a good thing. However, stimulation coming from a live human and stimulation coming from tv are very different. We cannot jump up and down, change colours, sing, dance, talk all at the same time. There is so much thrown at your child to get his/her attention, that without all those special effects, he or she quickly gets bored. In other words, his or her attention cannot be held for any significant amout of time without the help of all the sounds and colours. Sound familiar? Does tv cause ADHD? I don't know. Maybe all kids tend to be ADHD if given the opportunity. Just like most kids would eat the wrong things if they had the choice ;)
All I'm saying is that developing attention span and concentration is important to future learning abilities. If your child's teachers have to compete with tv, guess who's going to win? In the end, I think moderation is the key, as with everything else. But I do applaud those who do without entirely. For the rest of us common mortals, we can at least try to reduce the importance of tv in our kids' lives. But hey, that's just my opinion.
See I think that one thing people ARE doing wrong when it comes to kids and TV is just sitting their kids there. I think with kids under 2 especially that parents should be watching age appropriate shows WITH the child, and telling them what things are. I don't know if any of your children watch Baby Einstein, but that is all my 1 year old really watches. Parents today ARE using the TV as a baby sitter and not as a teaching tool.
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