The marketing pitch is enticing - “watch this especially produced show to make your baby smart” or “watch this video, and it will develop your baby’s brain.” Many parents are happy to leave their kids with these shows because these shows act as good babysitters that can entertain their babies while they are busy with everyday work. Parents do not feel guilty because they think that when their babies or toddlers are watching these shows, it is “quality time”. Programs (and videos) geared for babies are becoming popular. Also, according to a University of Washington Research, 40 percent of three-month-old babies are already watching TV. But is TV (and Video) really good for babies and toddlers? According to Dimitri Christakis of Childrens Hospital in Seattle and writer of the The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids, while older children can learn from educational shows, no study has shown that babies benefit from watching television and video. In fact, it can actually do harm:Note that when your baby smiles at the TV, the TV does not smile back. This may affect him socially and psychologically. Speech and language Dr. Sally Ward found that over the last 20 years, an increasing number of 9-month-old children are having trouble paying attention to voices when there is also background noise coming from the TV. This may affect their paying attention in class when they go to school. Also, when kids who watch TV go to school, they have to make a change from being primarily visual learners to listening learners. If a kid watches more TV than interact with the family, he will have a hard time making this transition, and his school learning will suffer. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Childrens Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, found that children who watched television as babies are more likely to have shorter attention spans, problem concentrating and impulsiveness by age 7. He also states that although Attention Deficit Disorder is genetic, TV can also trigger this condition because TV rewires the babys brain. The still-developing brain adapts to TVs fast pace and over- stimulation. Many.Many TV shows and videos geared to kids are actually teaching them the wrong things. They distort reality with their cartoonish and unnatural depiction of the world. Also, the pacing of these shows is fast and teaches the baby’s sponge-like brain to always expect fast-paced input. The real world, as they will soon find out, is much more boring and requires patience to adapt to. Many other studies have found that long-term exposure to television diminishes childrens ability to communicate via reading and writing. It can also lead to attention and learning problems in the long term. Even when media plays in the background, it distracts babies from play, an activity that is known to have deep developmental benefits. And for parents who use media to carve out a few precious, necessary free minutes in busy schedules, Brown recommended letting kids entertain themselves. “We know you can’t spend 24 hours a day reading to your child and playing with them. That’s okay. What’s also okay is your child playing independently,” she said. “That’s valuable time. They’re problem-solving. They’re using their imagination, thinking creatively and entertaining themselves.”
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 16:10:56 +0000
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