My son was gaga over Blue’s Clues at a year old. You couldn’t get him to shut up about it when the damn show was on. He had a TV in his room because it was really tiny and had a VHS player in it and I got a new one with a DVD player and then I didn’t have to listen to “We just figured out Blue’s Clues!”
Look, almost anything a kid is doing is bound to be entertainment. “Info” tainment isn’t that much better than regular cartoons.
I thought Baby Einstein was total crap, but really, it may be that in 10 years we’ll find it does little or no long-term damage.
But my son is 7 and he has restricted TV/computer/Wii time. Still, what are you going to do with a 7 mo year old all day? Give him Legos to play with?
Children’s librarian here. At 7 months of age, 2 hours of TV a day is about 1 hour and 55 minutes more than they should have. The Baby Einstein stuff is less harmful than Spongebob, but it is not good for developing brains (and right now your baby’s brain is developing at a furious rate) to sit passively in front of the tube. You’ve only got one shot to give your baby the best brain he can get. I urge you to cut back on the glass teat and get your baby into a more stimulating environment.
I honestly think it’s quite overhyped. I know a lot of people who grew up with television watching, and there doesn’t seem to be any correlation with cognitive impairment. What studies have actually been performed on this?
And, really, I don’t see how a “least harm” perspective is doable. There are so many things you’re supposed to avoid with kids, and I think television watching is pretty far down the list.
We don’t know the long term effect on tv. To me, it’s everything you do the other 10 hours a day the baby is awake. (Mine slept 12 a day, so…) My son watched Fox & the Hound after his first bday. It was a gift and was his first full length movie. Blue? BLue who? It was 'Foss n hown!" every day. He loved that movie. He got a stuffed dog and named it Copper. Copper went everywhere with him. (Still does.) Copper watched the show with him. Copper howled when Copper on TV howled. And so forth.
I’m not sure he actually watched it every day and I don’t recall him throwing many fits, but it is longer than a cartoon clip - 83 mins. And I didn’t mind, not one bit. I know I’m a quality parent. Truth is, no one needs TV. I think two hours is a lot, but I also don’t know your home situation.
A TV should not be used as babysitter. Not even when Mother needs to go to the toilet - put the kid in the playpen, he will be safer.
Below kindergarten age (4 years), and esp. below 3 years, TV is very bad not only for psychological reasons (more below) but for neurological reasons. Even TV aimed specially at kids like Teletubbies is still far too fast for the visual system processing of a toddler. This harms - esp. with long hours daily! - the development. There have been studies done recently (with EEG and tests to check) that found that toddlers who watched TV did much worse on concentration, visual input etc. Since these are basic skills for a lot of further develpoment, this is doubly negative.
Psychologically, a small child (until end of primary) should not watch TV alone, but with a parent or adult to talk to them about what it means. DVDs or modern TV with record function are good, as they allow to pause, address the question of the child - or ask to check that the child understood - and then continue.
It’s true that TV is part of life and that used correctly it can be benefical. But correct use is not learned by plunking the kid down unsupervised. It’s learned by discussing with the child how many hours per day are allowed and that TV is a treat after chores are done. Also watching together, and esp. important with kids TV, discuss the ads! There are tons of ads that kids believe because they don’t know better, and not only will the kids drive the parents crazy with it, they will also get attached to some brands not because of a rational decision of pro and cons, but because they get used to it.
Likewise, as the kid gets older, they need to learn with the adult how to evaluate news programs and truth value of journalism and TV.
The psychological program is that TV series is often the dumbest denominator, (viewers are morons), often with unintendend Aesop-backfire. They also stifle the creativity. True, good child programs can stimulate curiosity - but that requires screening by the parent, not just some promotional label of “educational”!
As to those who say they grew up with TV - surely you didn’t start watching TV as toddlers 20 years ago? There were no special program aimed at pre-school children back then.
My son is almost seven weeks, and obviously TV is not really an issue yet, but when I sit there and watch him stare at his mobile–and he really likes to stare at his mobile–it occurs to me that if I had him in front of the TV watching the exact same thing, I’d be a “bad parent”. The difference between the two seems artificial, and a bit luddite-ish.
I guess what I am saying is that while I totally agree with the idea that babies need stimulation and interaction, I am not sure that it’s always true that more stimulation is more better: kids can and do get overstimulated. Would it really be in a 7-month old’s best interest to be talked at and interacted with every minute they weren’t asleep?
There’s a lot of pressure on parents to be constantly interactive: swings are “neglect-o-matics” and such. And while people may reluctantly allow that sometimes mom has to go to the bathroom, it’s always with the implication that those moments are a necessary evil. I’m not sure I entirely buy that, but I am also not sure I’m not just rationalizing the fact that I sometimes wind that mobile up three or four times in a row while I sit in a sleep-deprived stupor watching him watch it. And we just replaced the batteries on the swing.
I think, in the future, they will discover that like language, the skills required to focus and concentrate, must be acquired during those all important first few years. Tv shows and kid vids are created to be captivating to them, in part, by constant stimulus, changing images, swiftly moving content, etc. I believe the day will come when Doctors warn parents that ADD is, in part, caused by exposure to TV. (As in having it on while young children are about!)
You’re going to have to go back quite a bit further than 20 years. Nick Jr, a block of programming aimed at kids under 6, started in 1988. Sesame Street came out in 1969 and that’s definitely aimed at preschoolers. Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, which has been on air for at least 40 years, was aimed at kids aged two and up (and these are well known and popular shows. They put one of Fred Rogers’ trademark cardigans in the Smithsonian in 1984).
But the mobile is a real object, whereas to a baby, a TV is a lot of fast-blinking lights. TV is very stimulating, but in a weird way.
No, it would not; that wouldn’t be right. But a baby can lie on a blanket under a tree and look at leaves for quite a long time; it’s relaxing and real. I am certainly not one to say that Mom has to be interacting with baby every single minute, but there’s a big difference between a baby in a chair watching the world go by, seeing and hearing real stuff, and a baby in a chair watching flashing lights on the TV.
Uh… sure we did. In the US we had Sesame Street, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and Reading Rainbow, just to name a few. Those were considered educational and guilt-free, even to my wheat germ chomping hippie parents. We could also watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom animal documentaries – which started in 1963 and continues to this day. The early 70s brought any number of hallucinogenic programs produced by Sid & Marty Krofft, the most famous of which are the ultra-wierd “H. R. Pufnstuf” which broadcast from 1969-1971 and “Land of the Lost” in 1974. Keep turning the clock back, and meet Howdy Doody which ran from 1947 - 1960.
Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame STREEEET?
I didn’t watch SS, but I had an older brother, so when we could afford TV (after the divorce), it was on, with the foil over the antennae and everything.
But I also remember watching cartoons and movies. I wasn’t a year old, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what I was doing then. My dad spoiled the shit out of me and I had every toy imaginable - giant stuffed animals, toy musical instruments, tricycles, Cabbage Patch. I wouldn’t be surprised if I watched tv. I remember that my dad took me to see Oliver & Company at the theatre several times and that was in 1988, so I would’ve been three.
What’s worse than kids tv is parents watching the news. I grew up on news and PBS. I remember the Gulf War and Russians being very scary as a kid.
is there any evidence a baby makes the distinction between passively looking and black and white swirls emblazoned on a “real object” and passively looking at tv images? Can it even understand the mobile is an “object” and the television images are not, without being able to touch and examine the mobile?
For everyone claiming that Baby Einstein is better than anything else, Disney and the makers of Baby Einstein would like to differ with you, Baby Einstein has a negative value and they admit it. This was all fall out from a scientfic study which found that kids who had done Baby Einstein were actually language delayed.
Except that there is quite a fundamental difference between a TV programm and a mobile: the rate with which pictures change. This can be measured on a TV screen (and scientists did). And scientists measured how long a baby of … age has to stare at one object in order to “see” / understand/ comprehend it. And they found that the rate at which pictures change on TV (even the special toddler shows) is several factors faster than kids are able.
To claim this is luddite-ish means that you ignore scientific findings (= being anti-science) or that you honestly are not able to comprehend a rather big difference, which would throw doubts on your own reasoning facilities. Maybe you meant something else?
Are all households now single-parent households that mothers can’t go to the bathroom any more without needing an electronic babysitter?
And which serious pedagogic or psychatric expert recommends constant interaction? None that I know off. The hype mostly seems to come from companies trying to sell “interactive” toys/ “educational” DVDs or special books/ methods on how to interact.
If somebody who’s not a scientist is trying to sell you something, they are often lying.
The mobile isn’t designed to compel his attention. TV does. It is designed to keep the watcher engaged. The images change fast (especially children’s programming) and are developed to be maximally engaging. It also has a built in beginning and end, training the child to hold attention for certain blocks of time.
The mobile, or blocks, or tree leaves are activities directed by the child. Whether the child tires of looking, or is so engaged with the shifting patterns they stay engaged, the child’s attention is self directed.
Grabbing the mobile is a seperate task - learning hand-eye- coordination - and only works if the mobile is hanging low enough to be grabbed; many mobiles are too high to be grabbed.
And yes, the visual system in a baby - that is, the way the cells in the eyes receive light, transform it into electrical signal to travel over the nerve into the brain, and the way the visual center in the brain interprets these signals - develops in the first weeks and months, it’s unfinished when the baby is born.
And the way the system develops is by the baby looking at things, slowly learning how to get images sharp, differentiating colours*, learning shapes (different process from recognizing colours), learning to combine two different pictures for 3D, interpreting distance from that…
Pictures that constantly change delay that process considerably. Again, scientists did measure that, and the results were obvious.
Language plays a part in this, and that’s why mothers reading picture books to their children say “Look at the green grass” - the child needs to learn that the colour is called green and that it’s different from blue.
These were aimed at primary schoolers, not toddlers, right? Die Sendung mit der Maus is from the 70s, too, but it’s shown once a week for 30 min. aimed at 5year olds. Wissen macht Ah is younger and aimed at 8year olds and above, and Logo and other TV news for kids are aimed at 10 years around.
The Teletubbies were the first show specially aimed at pre-Kindergarden that I remember, and caused a stir precisly because this group was considered too young to be sat down in front of a TV, and there was a lot of promises to make the programme suited to small children, with less change rate, and more repetition, and so on.
And in the 70s and 80s, the change rate (pictures per min). of TV in general was much slower than in the 90s MTV generation.
If really whole generations of kids in the US were babysat by the TV starting below 1 year old, that’s another explanation (Besides the constant sleep deprivation of US culture) on why people are doing so badly on so many tests and have trouble concentrating and with abstract thought.
