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No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

nytimes.com

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Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#81

Post by phuff »

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?

We're doing this with our second child now. It removes a lot of frustration from the parents and the kids when the child can actually communicate about what they want, see, hear, think, etc. It seems to cut down on fits, and definitely helps us communicate. As one of the other commenters said kids' language apparatus is fully functioning before they have the fine motor skills necessary to make all the speech sounds they need to say words, so it's a nice hack :) Teach them sign language which they have enough fine motor skills to use until their mouth control gets to the point that they can speak.

Our first kid is now 5 and doesn't really remember any signs, but he said sentences and told stories even in sign language before he could speak well.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#82

Post by derekprior »

ajross wrote: post #71
derekprior wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's about the fact that kids watching a screen aren't ... learning how to communiate (sic)" Does sign language count as communication? Because my son learns signs from occasional DVD watching and then applies them in the proper contexts - sometimes without any reinforcement from his parents or anyone else. Pretty sure that qualifies as learning how to communicate.

Clearly I'm no expert, nor do I know if studies have been done on the effect of TV watching on ASL acquisition. I'll bet good money, however, that however many signs your more from signing with you instead of passively watching the device. Which, for verbal speech, is exactly what the studies show.

Maybe, but now you've changed your argument. Previously it was that they weren't learning at all, now they aren't learning as well. Even so, there are points in response:

1. I'm really not equipped to show him the multiple images of a coat or someone putting on a coat, or other children doing signs of coat. The video is. I don't know if this matters or not. It's certainly possible it doesn't.

2. I have to make dinner for us all at some point. As much as I'd love for my 15 month old to patiently engage in conversation with me while remaining a safe distance from the stovetop, it just doesn't happen. There are times when a parent's attention just cannot be 100%, or even 75% on their child. So yes, maybe he would learn EVERYTHING better if I were there to teach it to him, but the fact is that even the best parents can't be.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#83

Post by frossie »

grandalf wrote: post #52

I think that if you're ignoring your kid and watching a lot of TV the problem is that you're ignoring your kid. If you're watching more than about an hour of TV per day as a new parent then you either have a staff of people caring for your kid or you're slacking off. If you don't converse with the child's other parent or others in the household b/c the TV is the center of everyone's attention, then you have a relatio…

This anti-TV meme is mostly luddite fearmongering intended to get joe and jane sixpack to stop vegging out in front of the TV and start being engaged as parents.

That is not what the Academy of Pediatrics is actually saying. They specifically say that you as the parent is not required to engage with your child the whole time - however if you are NOT engaged with them, you are still better having the TV off, because children gain valuable skills from solitary play.

In other words, it's not a simplistic case of "Parents better than TV"; it really is a case of "no TV better than TV".

Obviously with all these things, quantity does matter.

I should add the other benefit of no screen time before two: when you finally do introduce programming, at least in my experience, kids are far more highly engaged with it, so when you expose them to it later it seems to "take" better. Anecdotally, the kids who are exposed to it as babies seem to also not to focus attentively on it when they are older, so if you do want to take advantage of the screen's great educational potential (not talking about the Baby Einstein crap), you do seem to be better off holding off for the first couple of years.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#84

Post by ajross »

derekprior wrote: post #82
ajross wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly I'm no expert, nor do I know if studies have been done on the effect of TV watching on ASL acquisition. I'll bet good money, however, that however many signs your more from signing with you instead of passively watching the device. Which, for verbal speech, is exactly what the studies show.

Maybe, but now you've changed your argument. Previously it was that they weren't learning at all, now they aren't learning as well. Even so, there are points in response: 1. I'm really not equipped to show him the multiple images of a coat or someone putting on a coat, or other children doing signs of coat. The video is. I don't know if this matters or not. It's certainly possible it doesn't. 2. I have to make dinner…

I've reread my posts, and don't see where I said children weren't learning. The science shows kids who watch TV speak later, period. Anecdotes (your kid learning some signs from a DVD, the earlier poster learning to read from TV) don't change that. Sorry, but they don't.

As for point 2, I don't disagree at all. Everything is a tradeoff, no parent can be perfect. Most kids turn out fine anyway. If you have to give your kids TV (my 3 year old gets about two hours a week, for instance) then do so and don't feel guilty. But don't try to justify it as educational; the science disagrees.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#86

Post by pdx »

My 1.5 and 2.5 year old kids are both well acquainted with "Sprout" Channel, a preschool channel, and have been for over a year.

Not only do they know what they are seeing on the TV, regularly talking about various stars of the channel, such as Nina and Star, but the 1.5 y/o can even ask for the channel by name "I want sprout", and the 2.5 y/o can additionally even work the remote to get it, and say the numbers "1","1","9" as he's pushing them. Finally, my 1.5 y/o is already addicted to books and will page through them when there is a commercial or something she's not interested in.

They both learn a ton watching sprout. My 1.5y/o does dances and things that she sees, as well as says things I know she never learned from us.

We also have a large selection of YouTube playlists of childrens songs, age appropriate cartoons, and slightly non-age appropriate cartoons like 1940's vintage Micky Mouse cartoons. Again, they both ask for the playlist they want "I want Micky", "I want Dragon", "I want Caillou", etc.

Kids learn by observing the world around them. When I was a kid, I was watching my parents work a cattle ranch. My kids are often stuck in the house for five or six hours at a time, because I don't have a cattle ranch. They've explored every room, cabinet, jar, and canister that they have access too, and their huge collection of books hold no mysteries for them. You can only sit and try to read for so long, before you're sick of it for awhile, and they know all the pictures and can correctly tell you every animal, vegetable, vehicle, and geographical feature those books contain. What they see on the TV and computer supplements their learning opportunities.

Based on my experiences, I have to call bullshit on this politically correct article, and those like it.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#87

Post by nknight »

estevez wrote: post #9
xutopia wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study also refers to heavy use but does not define what heavy means.

Heavy media use in a household is defined as one in which the television is on all or most of the time.

What the heck is "all or most of the time"? Which time?

What if everyone including the child is regularly out of the house for all but a few waking hours per day?

"the television" -- which one? Does the one in the teenager's bedroom count? How do computers factor in?

Please tell me they used stricter and more thorough criteria than that for "heavy media use".

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#88

Post by pyre »

Alex3917 wrote: post #62
maratd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've heard that it can lead to less frustration when the child has a means to communicate with the parents. If they know enough to be able to sign their brains are developed enough to want to communicate something.

As a counter-point, my daughter did not pick up on sign language at all. The advice that we got was to stick with a single sign and keep at it until she signed it back at us. My wife chose "Milk," but that was probably a poor choice. I don't think that she recognized "Milk" as being an object until well after she was speaking. It wasn't until she started drinking non-breast milk that she started saying "milk."

Now she's 19 months old and the only sign language that she know is "more," but she has an great vocabulary. She can even say her own name and the names of all of her friends. (It's also really cute when she says 'zombie')

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#89

Post by voidfiles »

Alex3917 wrote: post #46

Some statistics and information from the 2008 book Parenting, Inc.: "A nationally representative study from the 1990s found that only 17 percent of children under one were watching television and fewer than half of children between the ages of one and two watched. In a 2006 study of 1,009 parents, 40 percent of babies were watching TV or DVDs/videos by three months; the average baby started watching videos at six mon…

In school we studied research that correlated how many of hours of TV a day a person watched, and life expectancy. As many people thought the more tv you watched your life expectancy fell.

When you first hear that it sounds like TV can reduce your years on earth.

When they took a close look though they found a confounding variable; health care.

Those who watched more TV tended to be poorer, and thus had less healthcare. It's possible that the same thing is happening in this group of research as well.

Re: No TV for children under 2, urge doctors

#90

Post by grandalf »

frossie wrote: post #83
grandalf wrote: post #52

I think that if you're ignoring your kid and watching a lot of TV the problem is that you're ignoring your kid. If you're watching more than about an hour of TV per day as a new parent then you either have a staff of people caring for your kid or you're slacking off. If you don't converse with the child's other parent or others in the household b/c the TV is the center of everyone's attention, then you have a relatio…

This anti-TV meme is mostly luddite fearmongering intended to get joe and jane sixpack to stop vegging out in front of the TV and start being engaged as parents. That is not what the Academy of Pediatrics is actually saying. They specifically say that you as the parent is not required to engage with your child the whole time - however if you are NOT engaged with them, you are still better having the TV off, because c…

But couldn't some programming be beneficial and some harmful?

It just seems like quite an oversimplification to say that all TV is neutral or harmful to development.

My kid is 15 months and we occasionally play "signing time" sign language training DVDs. She's learned a lot of spoken vocabulary from it, and appears to be in the 99th percentile for language development. She doesn't typically sign anything (except for milk) but the other day I asked her what the sign is for a few things and she actually seems to know them.

There is no way to tell for certain, but I credit the signing time videos with giving her a very clear sense of core (verbal and signed) language symbolism. The repetition of words, signs, and pictures has always seemed quite interesting to her, with the less familiar, more abstract words/concepts initially seeming a bit less interesting and subsequently gaining significance as her overall awareness improved.

I have noticed on the few occasions when we've had a movie or show on the TV when she's been around that she'll initially pay close attention to it and then after a minute or two begin to stare blankly at it... this is quite the opposite reaction she has to the signing time videos.

So to summarize I'm skeptical that it makes sense to generalize too much about the specific age ranges when kids are "ready" for various stimuli. I think that metaphor is stretched too far. Instead, a child will find certain stimuli intensely interesting (including some stuff that may be on a TV). To the extent that the child can conceptualize the structure of the stimulus enough to provoke learning, the stimulus can be considered "good" or beneficial to learning. But the developing brain will also get overwhelmed, so after a certain point even a good stimulus becomes noise and can only lead the child to exert effort to tune it out, which would use up cognitive effort for something without any learning benefit.

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