No TV for children under 2, urge doctors • Hacker News Board

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#61

Post by joezydeco » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:51 PM UTC

transburgh wrote: post #36

pwenzel wrote: post #25

My wife and I chose to adopt a "no screen time" policy for our child, who is presently 7 months old. Here are my observations so far: 1. At a restaurant with TVs, we've observed our child go from laughing and socially engaged, to completed zoned out and unaware of people in mere seconds, just because the television appeared in his field of view. :-( 2. At less than three months of age, he had a fit when pulled away f…

While I completely agree with you, the one thing I question about the restaurant tv example is, does the child zone into the tv because it is something they rarely experience and provides changing imagery that catches their eye? Again, I don't disagree with the overall point, I just wonder if their interest that you are experiencing is due to the intrigue of something new and not necessary zoning out just because it…

If I'm in a restaurant and there is a TV in my field of view, my eyes are continually drawn to it. It's the nature of the bright, changing image.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#62

Post by Alex3917 » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:52 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #59

dolinsky wrote: post #51

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images includi…

> incorporated teaching him sign language from the time he was 4 months If you don't mind elaborating on this, why did you teach him sign language?

It's a popular trend because kids are able to do sign language before they're able to speak. IIRC it doesn't seem to help their language acquisition or cognitive develop at all, but it doesn't seem to hurt much either.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#63

Post by markbnine » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:53 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #59

dolinsky wrote: post #51

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images includi…

> incorporated teaching him sign language from the time he was 4 months If you don't mind elaborating on this, why did you teach him sign language?

It's pretty common. . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_sign_language

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#64

Post by Alex3917 » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:54 PM UTC

0x12 wrote: post #53

No TV is so 1990. Really, today 'No TV' would be easy to achieve while still overdosing on Youtube, netflix and so on. Computers screens are more often than not the delivery vector for your daily dose of passive consumption. And it's not just the desktop machines either, it's the iPads and the phones that happily join in. Even not having a TV no longer means that you are immunized against this, and being without inte…

By TV they mean video content, it's still TV even if you're watching it on your computer.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#65

Post by ryusage » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:56 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #59

dolinsky wrote: post #51

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images includi…

> incorporated teaching him sign language from the time he was 4 months If you don't mind elaborating on this, why did you teach him sign language?

It's pretty common to teach children a little bit of sign language before they can talk, actually. I remember being really impressed that my niece was able to ask for more of something (generally food) using sign language long before she spoke her first word.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#66

Post by dbbo » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:57 PM UTC

I find it somewhat strange that video games are OK (it's on a screen but interactive) and I guess live theater is OK (it's passive but not on a screen), but the combination of passively watching something on a screen is not OK.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#67

Post by adestefan » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:59 PM UTC

dolinsky wrote: post #51

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images includi…

My daughter is almost the same age as yours and does the same thing. The only time we have the TV on with her around is either the Toddler Tunes channel or sports (mostly because it's the only thing we ever watch around those times). One thing I've noticed is that my daughter never sits down in front of the TV just to watch. She has no desire to do it at all. The closest she comes is she'll says "Dance, dance" and point to the TV. If we turn on the music channel she starts bouncing around, dancing with myself or my wife, or picks up a doll to dance with.

We also read every night, but don't do the sign language thing.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#68

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 8:01 PM UTC

dolinsky wrote: post #51

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images includi…

[deleted]

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#69

Post by raganwald » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 8:03 PM UTC

OpenAmazing wrote: post #18

My wife use to be a social worker. It is incredibly sad how many children are put in front of a TV all day. And not Sesame Street or even cartoons - but Soap Operas, Jerry Springer, Cops, Fox News etc. Picture a dirty trailer home, behind on rent, no job, fast food for every meal and a rented 52-inch rear-projection TV that is on all. the. time. When health care professionals make statements like this, the bad parent…

the good parents (like the ones that read HN)

I greatly respect the people I’ve interacted with on HN, but I would stop far short of assuming that intelligence and competence in something like hacking automagically transfers over to an orthogonal skill like parenting. This is partly because of my own anecdotal experience raising children while working in software development, and partly because of what I’ve observed which is that nearly every successful professional class assumes that they are good parents and clearly superior to people who are financially unsuccessful.

Often times, they are. Some people have poor life skills that translate directly into poor parenting skills. Some people have good life skills that seem to cross over directly into good parenting skills. But some poor people are great parents, and some successful people do not practice good parenting... Yet.

One of the attributes of being a good parent is to recognize when you could be even better. Thus, I guess my real message is that regardless of how we view our parenting skills, we ought to be open to the possibility that advice like this may apply to us even if we aren’t living in a trailer.

(Disclosure: I live in an extremely modest cottage that is Toronto’s equivalent to a trailer home).

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#70

Post by jim-greer » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 8:05 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #64

0x12 wrote: post #53

No TV is so 1990. Really, today 'No TV' would be easy to achieve while still overdosing on Youtube, netflix and so on. Computers screens are more often than not the delivery vector for your daily dose of passive consumption. And it's not just the desktop machines either, it's the iPads and the phones that happily join in. Even not having a TV no longer means that you are immunized against this, and being without inte…

By TV they mean video content, it's still TV even if you're watching it on your computer.

Actually a lot of it is specific to TV, because some families just leave it on in the background all the time:

“I like to call it secondhand TV,” said Dr. Brown... Studies cited in the guidelines say that parents interact less with children when the television is on, and that a young child at play will glance at the TV — if it is on, even in the background — three times a minute.