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How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

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Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#181
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teletubbies is aimed at children young enough to not be speaking yet - 6 months to 2 years old.

Children under two aren't even supposed to watch television. > Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child's brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens. https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-ini...

That's American pediatricians and those rules didn't ever seem to have much in the way of evidence to support them.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children under two aren't even supposed to watch television. > Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child's brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens. https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-ini...

These rules are considered to be outdated and very few pediatricians suggest "0 screen time" anymore. Please see various MODERN materials and their sources at: http://www.zerotothree.org/parenting-resources/screen-sense/...

The summary box at the very top of your link says "children learn better and more efficiently from play and interaction in the “real,” three-dimensional (3-D) world with parents, caregivers, and peers" and that there is "no research showing that when children younger than 2 years old use these devices independently it enhances their development" and implies that the only reason for having > 0 screentime is simply because there's so many screens you might as well give up.

Sounds pretty much the same as the AAP advice, just more cynical.

It looks from elsewhere in this thread you're taking this as a criticism of your parenting skills. Yes, it is easier just to turn the TV on to distract your kids for 15 minutes. When all is said and done we don't know what the effects are and even if they aren't great, there's millions of other kids doing the same thing so it'll probably be OK. But that doesn't mean that other people might find it in their interests to find a way to eliminate that tool for distraction. Maybe you can too - suppose the kids helped you with dinner? Even very young children can be taught to contribute with basic tasks.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I see so much of these kinds of articles. All I can do is despair as my generation begins to make the exact same mistake as our outrageous parents who had very similar things to say about childhood programming which we all wax nostalgically on now." Thank you so much for this insightful post. As the parent of a two and four-year-old, reading this article all I could think was, "But Sesame Street is not for you!!!…

And I can see it with my boys. Elmo youtube videos taught my two-year-old the alphabet, his shapes, and counting to 10, which blows his daycare teachers away. Sesame street (and the Electric Company) helped me with my early reading and numeric ability, long before Elmo showed up. You can watch classic episodes on Netflix and see that there was actually more of that stuff in the early years than there is today, with m…

Could you provide me a link to the research that demonstrates the shows you watched before Elmo resulted in better learning outcomes for children than the shows with Elmo?

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#184
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story you're about to hear is a fib, but it's fact.

Don't wanna be pedantic but I think the line was: "The story you're about to hear is a fib, but it's short. The names are made up but the problems are real." Honestly surprised I remember that gag since it's been ages since I watched that show but I did love those segments. It was like the Square One answer to 3-2-1 Contact's "Bloodhound Gang".

Go ahead an be pedantic; I looked up a video right after I made that comment and saw my error. :)

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#185
post #96
post #52

I'd rather a million Elmo-centric Sesame Street episodes than even one episode of Barney or Caillou. That said, every kid needs some old-school, Elmo-free Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. (No, "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is not the same; it's insipid and dumb by comparison.) Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet that was still loads better than network TV's attempt at a…

> It literally couldn't get any better for a kid than PBS in the 70s or 80s. Well, except for, you know, books. I don't really buy any of this "need" stuff when it comes to TV (or that one form is significantly better than another). If you drop your kid in front of anything and they turn into a slackjaw zombie (as my son tends to do), that's bad. If you drop your kid in front of anything that you watch, engage, and u…

>Well, except for, you know, books.

Don't confuse file type with content :)

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could program pascal and play basic Sierra adventure games by 6, on my own. I expect my daughter can surpass me if she gets interested.

Hey, me too (the game part, anyway). I memorized all the correct answers to the questions in LSL through trial and error, lol. Good times!

Haha, I have the same experience. "I Have Hair..."

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These rules are considered to be outdated and very few pediatricians suggest "0 screen time" anymore. Please see various MODERN materials and their sources at: http://www.zerotothree.org/parenting-resources/screen-sense/...

> The research is clear: Children learn better and more efficiently from play and interaction in the “real,” three-dimensional (3-D) world with parents, caregivers, and peers. > This resource provides guidelines for parents and caregivers of children younger than 3 years on how to use screens in ways that minimize the potential negative effects and maximize learning. > Although the body of research on the effect of s…

The message is, "Your TV is not a good substitute for a babysitter or any substitute for parenting."

There is absolutely no doubt that real world interactions are what toddler minds are optimized for. Most importantly, children without autism spectrum disorder learn from social interactions. There isn't much of any evidence that you sharing teaching tool with your child that is from a tablet is detrimental.

My family limits my daughter's unguided screen time pretty strictly. She gets 1 episode of sesame street in the morning and one episode of Daniel Tiger at another point in the day. If she is sick or has a supersleep day, we'll get 1 episode of something else she likes to help keep her calm.

But there is tablet and phone time where we focus on interaction. At her age, a camera is fascinating. She takes me to someplace (usually someplace she played earlier) and we take a picture, she then looks a the picture. As per the guidelines, we don't focus on technical features but rather on the social and real world interactions. I feel absolutely no concern about this. I can see her working out how toe camera works and experimenting, and it's amazing. She's fascinated by beaing able to see things from multiple angles at once, and I think this is healthy.

But 0 screen time is just so totally unrealistic in a world of smartphones. What's more, it's not how MANY of us grew up. I was using text consoles, unguided, within a year of learning to read.

I look at people who say all screen time is detrimental with the same dim view as people who say vaccines cause autism. It's often cause driven.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#188
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (No, "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is not the same; it's insipid and dumb by comparison.) You might need to go rewatch some MRN. Fred Rogers is basically a saint, but MRN had plenty of insipidness of its own.

Fred Rogers did something that the producers of DTN haven't; he drew strict boundary lines between realism and make-believe, opening each Neighborhood of Make Believe segment with "Let's pretend..." This emphasis on exposing fiction as not real tightened as the show went on: Picture-Picture would eventually lose its "magical" properties, and in one episode Fred actually walked off set and introduced the kids to the c…

DTN kind of Inceptions this concept -- Daniel often has "lets pretend" events, where he says "let's make believe" and wags his ears while sparkles shine.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These rules are considered to be outdated and very few pediatricians suggest "0 screen time" anymore. Please see various MODERN materials and their sources at: http://www.zerotothree.org/parenting-resources/screen-sense/...

The summary box at the very top of your link says "children learn better and more efficiently from play and interaction in the “real,” three-dimensional (3-D) world with parents, caregivers, and peers" and that there is "no research showing that when children younger than 2 years old use these devices independently it enhances their development" and implies that the only reason for having > 0 screentime is simply bec…

> Sounds pretty much the same as the AAP advice, just more cynical.

The fundamental difference is the inclusion of "guided" vs "unguided." There is this implicit assumption that "screen time" means "without continuous parent interaction" because our conversation is colored by the early 90s and television. The AAP advice doesn't differentiate. There's also a strong scent of "excluded middle" in your argument. Two 30 minute sessions of screen time, guided by parents, with programming specifically and scientifically designed for that age bracket is a hell of a lot different than parking your child in front of a television for 2 hours while you answer emails.

But even if we ignore that, 24/7 parenting presence is the province of the ultra rich, and often even then the province of women delegated to full primary caregiver status. So smug it up, friend. It's simply not economically possible for many people. You're still just another maybe-parent judging people on the internet.

I'll listen to my pediatrician and consults, thanks.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#190
post #52

I'd rather a million Elmo-centric Sesame Street episodes than even one episode of Barney or Caillou. That said, every kid needs some old-school, Elmo-free Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. (No, "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is not the same; it's insipid and dumb by comparison.) Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet that was still loads better than network TV's attempt at a…

Peg + Cat is a fairly intelligent PBS kids show. Lots of exposure to math & music concepts.

too bad she starts screaming "oh no a problem!!"

and panics

Not a good role model.

Same with Caillou, poor guy is too depressed...

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