[Sopater]

This report indicates that parents are relying heavily on "educational programming" for their children. Could it be that they are sincerely trying to find ways to better educatate their children or are they simply trying to push that responsibility off to allow more time for themselves? Maybe their actually just trying to justify the time that their children would be spending in front of the TV anyway by trying to ensure that the programs are "educational".

[EarthBound]

My wife and I ensure that out 15-month-old watches very little TV. Except for her Sesame Street, 30 minutes a day, the only thing else on TV is the evening news when we have dinner for background noise. We ensure that we have very little time to actually watch TV.

On a completely unrelated and off-topic note:

Most of these kids are watching what parents consider to be quote, unquote 'educational TV.

Why isn't it quote, body of text, unquote? Why do we always say quote,unquote, and then the body of text?

/crazy rant off.

[sageb1]

I watched a little Art Linkletter on rainy days when Mom was ironing. ;)

[dawn53]

Advocates and critics agree on one thing: More research is needed on television's effect on young brains

Well, it may be anecdotal, but my kid watched LOTS of music videos when he was young. We found that when he was 9 months old, he'd sit in a chair and watch a music video (kids music video...Wee Sing,Sing-A-Longs, etc.) So needless to say, we took advantage of that fact. He grew up loving music, is a wonderful pianist, did very well in math, and is about to earn his college bachelor's degree at the age of 19. We didn't do TV per se...especially TV with commercials, but he did watch a lot of music videos and I believe it influenced him for the better. Was he drawn to the music videos because that was his aptitude, or was his aptitude developed because of the music videos? I don't have the answer to that, but I don't think TV/video viewing is all bad...I think some programs can be good.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

I think videos like Baby Einstein are closer to child abuse than child development. Babies learn by touching, feeling, interacting and exploring, not by being little couch potatoes. Shame on the companies that foist this crap on parents and shame on the parents that buy into this line of BS. They must be either so vain as to imagine that their little precious ones are so precocious that they would actually understand the videos at 6 months old or so lazy that they use technology and money to try and offset bad parenting. Just my opinion, take it for what it’s worth.

[kevkrom]

Our two-year old gets an hour or two of TV toward the end of the day, as part of a settle-down routine. It's very friendly stuff like Thomas the Tank Engine, Bear in the Big Blue House, Little Einsteins, The Wiggles, etc., with no commercials. As parents, we watch it with him (not just used to "park" him while we do other things) and encourage him to interact with the shows, especially the ones with dancing & singing, or simple puzzles.

In general, he'll get less TV time on nice weather days because we're playing outside, and more on bad weather days as there's only so long the toys hold interest. ;)

[Thrusher]

Well, for what its worth, my mother used to park me in front of “Donahue” every day for an hour while she watched it and ate lunch.

I think I turned out okay. I’ve only been committed to the mental ward twice, and the second time was a complete misunderstanding. The nightmares are almost entirely gone, too... although old men with white hair and glasses still give me the heebie-jeebies.

:)

[goodwithagun]

This is slightly off topic, but what happened to cartoons? Cartoons used to be funny. Now children can’t watch a cartoon without learning how to spell the word homosexual, or without learning how to speak Spanish. What happened to Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry? I loved those shows when I was a kid.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Turn off the damned thing! It is a mind-control tool. It exists to convince us to buy things that we don’t need and to believe things that the producers want us to believe.
It missed the opportunity to do something useful in society a long time ago.

[JRochelle]

Stupid stupid parents.

Here is a study that should scare the heck out of them. TV has been shown to cause autism.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/17/0435250&from=rss

[elc]

We’re pretty good about not having the tv on when our 12 month old is in the room. Although Mr. elc does like to cuddle up with her every now and then and watch the Simpsons.

But we do purposely put on her Baby Signing Times dvd. It has been amazing. We’ve been working on signs with her ourself, but she’s learning the ones from the dvd much faster. Probably because we don’t sing cute little songs when we sign with her.