Rethinking T.V. Time For Toddlers

(CBS)  Elizabeth Drier does everything she can to stimulate her son Clayton's mind -through playtime and television time:

"As far as developmental videos, I really thought they made a huge difference for him, in identifying shapes and colors and rhythm and music and all that," Drier says.

Turns out, tuning in to T.V. and educational videos may not be doing what many parents of babies and toddlers think, reports CBS News correspondent Sandra Hughes.

A new study from Children's Hospital of Boston, published in the journal "Pediatrics," found T.V. viewing "does not seem to be associated with (the development of) language or visual motor skills...."

"Television had no independent effect on their brain development," says the hospital's Dr. Michael Rich. "So it did not help them, but it also did not seem to hurt them, either."

For more than a decade, pediatricians warned parents that children under the age of 2 shouldn't watch any T.V. - but still they do.

National findings show that 68 percent of children under 2 watch T.V. every day. A quarter of them even have televisions in their bedrooms.

The babies in the new study watched, on average, an hour a day at 6 months old, and up to an hour-and-a-half by 2 years old.

While the new study says there's nothing good or bad about that for brain development - the authors say parents shouldn't just turn the remote control over to their toddlers.

"Kids who watch a lot of T.V. early tend to be more overweight, they tend to have more attention problems and more sleep disruptions," Dr. Rich says.

But with all the money spent marketing educational videos and children's television - and the convenience of having an electronic babysitter -- pediatrians may have a hard time convincing parents to pull the plug.
By Sandra Hughes

[cdwalker]

Makes sense to me that children who start watching TV at an early age develop problems with attention. 7 minutes of a show, 3 minutes of 30 second segments, completely unrelated to the original show, all while the child's mind is developing its thought pattern. No wonder ADD has become so prevalent and kids only pay attention for a few minutes before their minds wonder. I wonder if an experiment can be performed with older kids who have watched varying amounts of TV. Give the kid a subject and see how long it takes for his mind to wander to other subjects, and if it can, i bet the time is close to how long a show is on TV before a commercial interruption occurs. ADHD Is simply a kid with ADD eating. Think about how much sugar and high fructose corn starch is in everything. Ketchup, cereal, most kid snacks, soda, fruit juices, the stuff is ok in moderation, but damn, have you looked to see how many products the stuff is in?

[koikoi2-2009]

But i'm not bitter... ha!

[koikoi2-2009]

Obviously, 4 hours of TV after school is excessive... tell that to my wife. I'm a History channel/Discovery kinda guy, maybe I'll catch a couple shows a week. The rest of the time, my wife is watching other peoples lives... damn reality TV.