Friday, 13 February 2009

• The Case for TV Time or Make Believe Time...

   by Mama Fox
  

  

  I'm reading a wonderful book, "The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World" by Susan Linn. Not only is it a great follow up to my last book "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety," it is essential for all parents to read.

  Unstructured play is crucial to a child's development and even health.  Babies are hardwired to play, they know what to do to learn about the world around them. What happens though is we get in their way.
  
  Originally I wanted to just read through it and write a book review, but I think it would be better to break the book into chapters and discuss them here.
  

  The first chapters are about why pretend-play is the corner stone of all childhood learning and how commercialized industry is targeting children through brands like Nickelodeon, Disney, Sesame Street and making millions of dollars in the process. Straight forwards and thought provoking.
  
  Then there's a chapter called "Baby Scam: The False Promise of Screen Time for Infants and Toddlers". I want to quote this because this really shocked me -
  

  "The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) actually recommends no screen time for children under two. Yet almost 50 percent of parents believe that baby videos have a positive effect on child development. By the time babies are two, 90 percent are engaged with screens for an average of an hour and a half per day, with 14 percent spending more than two hours a day in front of screens. 40 percent of three month old babies regularly "watch" television and DVDs for an average of forty five minutes a day. And 19 percent of babies under the age of one have a TV set in their bedrooms."

  Just wow.  The trend of "edutainment" shows for babies and toddlers have sky rocketed. Everyone has heard of the "Baby Einstein" shows and LeapFrog products, if not owning one or more. Companies are claiming that their shows or their "interactive" toys will teach babies and toddlers everything from letters to manners. Many quote the "Mozart effect", saying that listening to classical music makes children smarter. Then recently the study was done on college students and the effect only lasted 15 minutes.
  
  But the parents are buying into it. With the echoes of  the book Perfect Madness, parents want to give their children an every advantage they can give with the bonus that they don't have to be hands-on for 30 minutes at a time. But they don't realize that these videos and electronic toys are actually hurting their children more then helping.
  
  A recent study has shown that for babies between 8 and 16 months, watching the baby videos may even negatively affect word acquisition. Babies learn best by interacting with people, not the TV or toys. Children in the past have learned what they need to know by being talked to, shown, and just living in the world. TV watching for children under the age of three is also linked to doing less well on math and reading tests at the age of six - regardless of the amount of TV watched after three years old.
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  Not only is the baby video industry booming, so is child obesity rates. A preschooler's risk for obesity increases by 6 percent for every hour of TV watched per day, with a jump to 31 percent if there's a TV in their room. Are we sabotaging our children's weight and future success at school for the sake of "educational" television, especially when it's been shown that it's not that educational at all?
  
  This one really resonated with me, because it is a big concern for me. Are my kids, 3 and almost 5 years old, watching too much TV? We went from hardly watching TV at all last September to the boys wanting more and more of it, and I wasn't doing much to stop it. I stayed in my thinking of letting them self regulate and didn't see that they just weren't doing it anymore. I think it was the winter weather that kept us indoors more and that shift just naturally led to more TV time for everyone.
  
  While I don't encourage my 15 month old to watch TV, I know he catches glimpses of it when the older boys are watching. I will not buy movies nor put in movies specially for him, at least until he's over 2 years old. I am glad that he really has no interest in it right now and I hope it stays that way for a while. He would rather play with me or some toys than watch TV.
  
  We could think "oh, it's just a couple of movies and a cartoon or two," but really it adds up and they could easily be sitting there in a daze for 4 hours or more. My children have great imaginations, I love listening from the other room while they make up stories and act them out, but I'm starting to fear that the more TV they watch the less creative they will become.
  
  Reading this chapter gave me more compelling evidence that I am right to step in and limit their screen time more. Last night we had a family meeting and now our boys must earn their TV and computer time. They will earn a star worth 30 minutes for chores and other things. We are going to cap it at an hour and 1/2 a day (or 1 movie since most kids movies are about that), and I want to start having 2 "unplugged" days a week - where there's no TV or computer for them and as minimal as possible for me and my husband. (I have gone unplugged before and it worked well, we just fell out of the habit)
  
  I'm going to the store today to pick up a poster board, self laminate sheets and velcro dots to make up a chart. The boys are excited about it and today's first run, trading in a star they earned last night for one PBS show. Usually they watch three shows (an hour and 1/2 right there by 9:30am! ). This morning I asked them if they wanted to watch one show and they picked Super Why. H played with blocks and T sat near me looking at books while they waited for the right time. After it was over H turned it off without comment and went to play. They are outside playing right now.
  
  Ah success. I can rest easy that my boys are not being zombies to the boob tube and they have more time to visit the wonderful land of make believe.
  
  How do you feel about the baby "educational" videos? Do you regulate TV in your house?

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