TV is the contraption in question. My husband (very smart man) was raised on TV. I was junked out in front of the TV most days of my childhood (I’d like to believe I’m reasonably smart). Ella loves to watch the television. She asks for “Charlie and Lola” in the morning, I make sure to tune in “Jack’s Big Music Show” twice a day, we sometimes watch “The Wiggles”, and then there’s “Oobie”. These are all educational programs with no commercials. If you add just these shows up she watches 2 and ½ hours of TV a day. Not every day, sometimes we forget or are busy out and about but most days this is what she watches (some days more). I’d say we are heavy users of the ol’ boob-tube. I keep hearing the latest study that children under 2 shouldn’t watch TV at all and children over 2 shouldn’t watch more than 2 hours of educational TV. The study shows that these kids are less likely to graduate and lag in language skills and will probably grow up to be indigent drug dealers and hookers (damn that Ernie!)
Ok, so I feel guilty about the amount of TV she watches and am trying constantly to remember to shut it off. Dan thinks it’s not how much she’s watching it's what she’s watching.
He believes she should watch as much TV as she likes (after all he did) and we should just make sure she’s not watching CSI or the Surreal Life. (His parents never hassled him about watching too much TV, they would eat dinner around the TV as a family – I would describe them as a greaser and a poodle skirt wearer, later a factory worker and housewife who let Dan eat Wonder bread and Twinkies – got a picture in your head?)
I think the issue is more about pacing: If a child thinks the world should move to the next thing as soon as it gets the slightest bit boring and that everything absolutely everything is entertaining and everyone on the block sings (although we do a lot of singing around here) then their nueropathways develop in a way that expects constant entertainment rendering the real world utterly boring. (My parents hated TV we didn’t even have one for a bit, they called it the “boob-tube” – they were hippies, later an entrepreneur and engineer who insisted if I wanted something sweet to eat there was plenty of apples in the pantry - got a picture?)
This has been an argument we’ve had more than once and I’m doing a little research on it today and getting no-where. Is it “how much” or “what” she watches that is damaging folks? What's your take on it?
Postscripts
*Ella is not yet 2 and she knows her letters, colors, and many songs and can count to 5, she also dances and sings and plays and shares (sometimes). She seems normal in every way.
*This doesn't even take into account computer time for Ella
12 comments:
OK Jenny...you and I have both used the phrase "firm belief" or "firm believer" in our most recent posts.
Do we somehow think that by describing our beliefs as firm, they hold more weight? If we aren't really sure about something do we ever say we have a "soft belief"?
It's like when people start with "To be perfectly honest"...
But hey, just because we are firm believers in walking the hard line and having a stiff upper lip while we enforce our solid sensibilities does not mean by any sense of the words that we are inflexible.
Or perhaps we are fixated on firm, hard, stiff, solid, inflexible, things. (teehee)
It is my less than firm belief that those studies are bunk. I base this on my life experience, which really should apply in every situation because the world revolves around me.
I watched WAY too much TV as a kid. HUGE amounts. Seriously. And it wasn't kids programming. Some of it was, PBS and such. But I also never missed an episode of Dukes of Hazzard, Wheel of Fortune, As the World Turns or Murphy Brown. My grandma would yell at me to go play outside once in awhile, but I spent a lot of time in front of the boob tube.
I was reading at a 6th grade level when I was in kindergarten. I graduated high school with just under a 4.0 after taking 4 years of Advanced Placement classes. I got a 31 on the ACT. I am a database programmer working on my MBA right now, and I fully intend to rule the world.
Even though I thought that Cletus on the Dukes of Hazzard was really named Kleenex.
A study out of Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Centre in Seattle in 2004 linked “excessive” TV watching by 1-3 year olds to an increased chance of developing ADD. But…for every article I read that sang the praises of this study, I found another that claimed the data and research unreliable.
Also, I’ve been doing just a little research on what “attachment parenting” is (I had never heard that phrase before)…more to come on that later though when I have a more firm grasp on the ideals surrounding it.
There's some good stuff out there on the net about attachment parenting. I especially subscribed to the 'baby wearing' when Ella was little. (Rarely used a stroller and wore her in a sling under my coat, she slept and felt like she was still in utero – killed my back)
Really it's all about following your instincts. - Good stuff. It's like hippie parenting only with actual studies to back up the methodology.
So far (counting me and Dan)that's 4 votes for TV is great and 0 votes for turn off the boob tube.
Maybe MTV rotted our brains and we really don't know any better?
I was hoping that somebody would argue with me so that I could list some more of my accomplishments. :-(
If Ella is suffering from too much TV, I will be shocked. In fact, I plan on hiring her to be my next secretary shortly.
My humble Australian opinion is that it is all a matter of balance. A lot of studies against tv are because of childhood obesity, so I think as long as kids get out and run around and experience lots of things then tv is just one other form of entertainment for them. If it becomes the only form of entertainment that is when I would see a problem. I WISH my kids would watch tv sometimes so they could just sit still for five minutes ... but neither of them is the slightest bit interested in the telly. Argh! There's no right way to raise children - just muddle along like our parents did and consider it an accomplishment if they get to 18 alive :)
It's funny that you would post about this on this particular week. My husband and I have been trying an experiment with our 2 children (3 1/2 and 13 months) because we'd noticed the amount of TV time has been creeping slowly up in the last couple of months. We both work full-time, so in the evenings we were turning on Sesame Street and Dora/Diego to keep the kids occupied. (Mostly educational, though I don't really consider Dora to be a very good show -- Diego is only so/so.)
We didn't do this because of any studies or whatever, but we noticed if our older daughter gets one, she wants two shows; then she whines and stuff when it's shut off. She's generally much crankier in the evenings afterward, and you can't get her to budge during her shows (for dinner, potty, etc.) And with that start to the night, family time was more difficult. So we decided to keep the TV off in the evening this week. So far, so good -- we all play together and no one's asked about the TV.
I don't suspect we're becoming "anti-TV", but I think for us it gets us out of this one room where the TV is and doing other things.
That said, I don't personally subscribe to the studies that TV watching can delay development or cause ADD or other bad things. I think it depends on the role of TV within the family and how its presence is balanced by other things. Like Ella, our older daughter is extremely well-spoken for her age, can recite her alphabet and is well on the way to spelling whole words. I watched Sesame Street regularly as a child and I was academically advanced.
Hope this helps. Thanks for a thought-provoking post. :-)
I watched Sesame Street and hours of other TV and now I can't stand TV if it has commercials in it. Either way you do it, TV or none, I think the more important thing to do is to make sure that Ella's getting some positive stimulation and learning things, which it sounds like is not a problem (she actually sounds like she's picking things up really quickly, hooray!) As long as you love her and she gets to know lots of real people in addition to TV people, she should understand that what's normal for TV isn't normal for real life.
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