There's been a recent study on the effect of Baby Einstein videos on children. It looks to be supportive of the view that children under 2 years of age should not view any TV.
This is not likely to sit well with many parents that park their children in front of the TV every week, albeit "educational" videos or not. The research is slowly mounting that TV and young children may not be a good combination. Particularly for young children who are likely negotiating through some important critical periods for language development. Looks like we might want to grab the old reliable Dr. Suess and other children's books instead of the remote.
Read the article here: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,00.html
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5 comments:
Oh my. I know plenty of parents who are going to be upset by this finding. I just hope the researchers don't find that cute little Dora the Explorer also does more harm than good.
If I'm reading the article correctly, it appears that the most detrimental effect of video/t.v. viewing is poor language development. That seems so obvious after thinking about it since, after all, humans need interaction with others to develop language skills.
What's really scary to consider are the findings that the more t.v. children watch, the shorter their attention spans later in life. "Their minds come to expect a high level of stimulation and view that as normal." Could this be linked to ADHD?
I did my own little study with this by raising my two children, my son twelve and my daughter five. I "parked" my son in front of the television when he was very young, but only let him watch the "good stuff". By the time my daughter came along I was a little older and wiser and would "park" her in front of the front door in her playpen and let her watch the world. My son was diagnosed with ADD at 6 and has been on medication for it scence. He has to be doing something all the time and loves television. My daughter on the other hand has had a huge vocabulary from early on and has always surprised everyone how well she speeks. She would rather go outside and play, read or play a board game. I cant help but feel guilty about doing this diservice to my son, I know this was not the only reason he has ADD, but Im sure it did not help!
I'm in agreement with Tiffani here. We are one of those strange families with only ONE television in our home. AND, we never have allowed our kids to have video games...I know, child abuse, huh?! We were just both determined that our kids would be able to carry on conversations when spoken to, and experience life instead of watching it on a screen while in a stupor-like state. As unusual as it seems, our kids, who are now teenagers, have been complimented many times on the fact that they can carry on conversations with anyone, at any age.( with the lack of electronic diversion, there has been plenty of training in conversation in our family!)It annoys me to see a little kid so absorbed in a videogame that they miss out on everything going on around them. It's such a waste of potential.
Tiffinit, Don't beat yourself up too much. One of the things that jumps out at me right away is the gender of the children. More boys than girls are diagnosed with ADD and ADHD, and boys are more likely to always "be doing something." Girls speak earlier, have more extensive vocabularies, and so forth.
There are, of course, exceptions to the above. However, I felt that mentioning this information might get you to look at both gender differences AND the basic difference in temperaments between the two.
Great post, Lisa. What annoys me is to see either a child or an adult so absorbed in a video game or t.v. that they don't even realize someone might be speaking to them...or worse yet, they realize it but choose to ignore you because they're so wrapped up in the screen before them THAT ISN'T EVEN REAL.
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