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conuly
And there's scads of comments going "Well, my kid watches TV at a very young age, but that's okay, everything in moderation - and besides, it's just background noise! He does other things!"
TV on as "background noise" isn't magically different from other types of "background noise" - say, heavy chatter, jackhammers, living under the flight path, lots of traffic, or loud rock music.
TV on as "background noise" interferes with your child's ability to focus and concentrate. Sure, your kid's still "doing other things" while "not actually" watching TV - but they're not spending as much time on any one activity as they would with the TV turned off.
TV on as "background noise" makes it harder for your child to hear things they should be hearing - like speech. Your child will not learn to speak from watching TV, and having the TV on "just in the background" will make it harder for your child to learn to speak because they can't hear YOU speaking as clearly, nor filter out speech from noise.
Saying "Well, they're not vegged out in front of the TV, so that's all right" is wrong. It is factually incorrect. It is NOT all right.
And then they go "everything in moderation". Man, that phrase pisses me off, not least because nobody really believes it. They don't use that phrase when talking about things nobody does with their kids. "Should I let my kid have some of my pot? Sure, everything in moderation! Should I let my 5 year old drive? Sure, just not on the highway - everything in moderation! Should I let my kid skip school once a week? Sure, everything in moderation - school is part of everything, isn't it?" And they don't really use it when talking about things we all think we need more of. "Should I get more than 10 minutes of exercise a day? Nah, you don't want to do it, exercise in moderation. Should I brush my teeth after dinner? Well, you brushed after breakfast, let's not go overboard - do it in moderation! Should I drag my lazy butt off to work today? Sheesh, work, you went just last week, everything in moderation! Hey, there's a winning lottery ticket on the ground, should I pick it up? What would you do with all that money? Being rich isn't something you can do in moderation!"
No, what they mean seems to be something like "I think this is a bad idea, but I find it convenient to pretend it's not... so long as I don't do it "too much", a vague term I'm not about to define for you."
It's all so sketchy. If you think you need to plop your baby (because this is who we're talking about, babies) in front of the television so you can handle things which are difficult to do with an undistracted baby floating about - go ahead and do that. And if you think it's a bad thing for them, go ahead and do NOT do that. But don't go around with weaselly little phrases like "everything in moderation" like it's okay so long as your child doesn't fit some arbitrary set of characteristics, like looking at the TV or something.
TV on as "background noise" isn't magically different from other types of "background noise" - say, heavy chatter, jackhammers, living under the flight path, lots of traffic, or loud rock music.
TV on as "background noise" interferes with your child's ability to focus and concentrate. Sure, your kid's still "doing other things" while "not actually" watching TV - but they're not spending as much time on any one activity as they would with the TV turned off.
TV on as "background noise" makes it harder for your child to hear things they should be hearing - like speech. Your child will not learn to speak from watching TV, and having the TV on "just in the background" will make it harder for your child to learn to speak because they can't hear YOU speaking as clearly, nor filter out speech from noise.
Saying "Well, they're not vegged out in front of the TV, so that's all right" is wrong. It is factually incorrect. It is NOT all right.
And then they go "everything in moderation". Man, that phrase pisses me off, not least because nobody really believes it. They don't use that phrase when talking about things nobody does with their kids. "Should I let my kid have some of my pot? Sure, everything in moderation! Should I let my 5 year old drive? Sure, just not on the highway - everything in moderation! Should I let my kid skip school once a week? Sure, everything in moderation - school is part of everything, isn't it?" And they don't really use it when talking about things we all think we need more of. "Should I get more than 10 minutes of exercise a day? Nah, you don't want to do it, exercise in moderation. Should I brush my teeth after dinner? Well, you brushed after breakfast, let's not go overboard - do it in moderation! Should I drag my lazy butt off to work today? Sheesh, work, you went just last week, everything in moderation! Hey, there's a winning lottery ticket on the ground, should I pick it up? What would you do with all that money? Being rich isn't something you can do in moderation!"
No, what they mean seems to be something like "I think this is a bad idea, but I find it convenient to pretend it's not... so long as I don't do it "too much", a vague term I'm not about to define for you."
It's all so sketchy. If you think you need to plop your baby (because this is who we're talking about, babies) in front of the television so you can handle things which are difficult to do with an undistracted baby floating about - go ahead and do that. And if you think it's a bad thing for them, go ahead and do NOT do that. But don't go around with weaselly little phrases like "everything in moderation" like it's okay so long as your child doesn't fit some arbitrary set of characteristics, like looking at the TV or something.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 02:56 am (UTC)But I would prefer people not try to pretend that it is somehow inherently good or not something done simply out of a need for some other benefit. Babies can't process TV the way children and adults can, so they can't learn from it. It is not equivalent to letting your child watch Sesame Street (which can actually be beneficial as kids can learn stuff from it). But I also don't expect any parent to do the ideal thing for a child every single moment of a child's life.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 03:02 am (UTC)No, I wouldn't either. And while I'll hardly say that TV is necessary (and, personally, I find that its effect on the nieces' behavior is detrimental - they behave much better when there's nothing like it near them) I can understand that sometimes you just want them out of your hair so you can WASH your hair. Heck, I've even done it, though I paid for it in the end.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 04:23 am (UTC)Anyhow, I'm not about to say TV is bad for all kids, especially in moderation. I always support a view of paying attention to what is and isn't working with a particular kid and a particular family. For example, if the kid hates watching Sesame Street then it's not likely to be good for the kid. Children aren't all identical.
But since you initially said babies, it made it very clear. We've never found evidence of TV being good for babies. It's why Baby Einstein is such an obnoxious marketing angle (well, part of why).
I think it partly depends on what other options are available. If TV is the best option available for a child, then it's probably better to let the kid watch it. But if you can make even better options available, then that's great. At least when we were watching TV my siblings and I weren't improvising fun that got any of us sent to the hospital, unlike the one incident that accidentally led to my brother smacking his head into a dresser. TV probably has a very low risk for head wounds.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 03:54 am (UTC)Anyway, I hate Baby Einstein videos and always thought the idea of them was ludicrous, because goodness knows that most parents will put on the show and leave the child to watch it, instead of interacting with the child while it's on. (This study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18801128) notes that children learn best from interactive models.) Having seen one, I can say that they don't make sense anyway; the spoken numbers aren't counting anything on the screen (so if baby does learn to count in German, it'll just be rote numbers; no concept or correlations drawn at all), and the visuals don't seem to match up with the audio track much at all.
Of course, the main problems with TV are the speed of the action on the screen and the refresh rate of the screen. Babies' and small children's eyes and brains physically can't process the information properly - that's where it comes into play with regard to attention and focus. (It's not good for adults, either, but it's not as big a deal for mature brains. Also, CRT is worse than flat screen.) I don't have a reference for that; it's courtesy of my husband. He has a good memory, but it's been years since he's looked into it, so he remembers the information but not where he read it.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 04:43 am (UTC)I wonder if there have been any studies done on the effects of background music on children's development? If it's classical or wordless, is it better than music with words or contemporary music? And if it's better, is it a positive effect or just a less negative effect? (I'm looking now, at the Wiley Online site, but I may have to wait until I can have a gander at the journals in question since I can't access the pay articles and my Acrobat Reader add-on is acting up. I did find a few that look promising, though.)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 08:51 pm (UTC)However, there have been other studies on the results of OTHER types of background noise. Children who go to school under the flight path are, within three years, a year behind children who go to school in a quiet area (in one such study it was classrooms on different sides of the same building!), children who lived in a housing project built straddling a highway in Manhattan (the things we New Yorkers dream up...) had a much higher than usual incidence of language delays and did more poorly in school than you'd expect, kindergarteners in a year where there was road construction did worse than their counterparts with the same teacher, in the same classroom, a year earlier and later.
So I'm thinking music may also be detrimental if it's on constantly.
"Background noise".
Date: 2011-04-04 08:37 pm (UTC)I have 20% hearing loss in both ears. "Background noise" means I can't hear you and have to constantly ask people to repeat themselves.* The policy in MY house is, if you're not actively watching and paying attention to the TV, it gets turned off.
Grey's kids are still trying to process this principle (visitations), but I figure that they'll get it eventually through consistency.
*Before you ask, a) I don't have medical insurance so hearing aids are out of my price range, and b) the last time I had them tested the doctor said he wouldn't prescribe aids for someone with "only" twenty percent loss anyway.
Re: "Background noise".
Date: 2011-04-04 08:48 pm (UTC)And yeah, I don't have any hearing loss that I know of (I often hear things others claim not to, so I assume my hearing is somewhat superior than average, though I have no way of knowing this), but it's hard for me to filter things out. I like my silence to be silent.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 07:16 am (UTC)As far as I know, they're working on ones that can discriminate a bit more and amplify "good" sounds (nearby speech, etc.) more than "bad" ones (background noise) - probably with microprocessors somehow.
I don't know how far along this technology is, though - and "smart" aids probably cost a fortune anyway.