TV really bad for kids?

[~Sarah~]

Jenn-that is a very interesting way to look at it.  It kind of touches on (in my head) another hot button topic: the whole princess dilemma.  If you are seeing prince charming "save you" and you have to be the pretty one, how will that play to your inner self talk later?

I wrestle with this one a lot since having a girl.  It makes me think long and hard about even the "innocent" Disney movies.  

I have just decided there are at least 1 million ways to screw up your kids!!!  How does anyone ever turn out all right??

[Love, laughter, & PJs]

I have just decided there are at least 1 million ways to screw up your kids!!!  How does anyone ever turn out all right??

I wonder this all the time.

[Jenn+Ethan+Emily]

Totally! I 100% think that we all do the best that we can and the best is different for everyone. I also think that if we spend too much time worrying about what will mess our kids up, we lose that inner mom feeling that really knows best and I think that's when we end up confusing our kids! No one wakes up in the morning and think "I'm going to do the wrong thing for my kid today!". We all totally adore our babies and we are all doing the right thing for them regardless of what anyone else thinks!

[Deb_in_oz]

Jenn-that is a very interesting way to look at it.  It kind of touches on (in my head) another hot button topic: the whole princess dilemma.  If you are seeing prince charming "save you" and you have to be the pretty one, how will that play to your inner self talk later?

I wrestle with this one a lot since having a girl.  It makes me think long and hard about even the "innocent" Disney movies. 

I have just decided there are at least 1 million ways to screw up your kids!!!  How does anyone ever turn out all right??

first - i highly reccommend reading :free range kids"  to sort through what you might genuinely need to worry about and what you can just relax a bit more - there has been such a shift in expectations on parents in our generation.  parents just let us get on with playing and life as kids and we all seemed to find the balance. more of an issue than access to tv and screen time is trhe inverse issue  - in many parts of the western world kids are not given time to just play and be free outside anymore.  that is more detrimental in my mind.

about the princess thing - i have heard this argument many times over the last 7 yrs. - IMO my kids are intelligent girls and i have told them that it is all make believe, there are real princesses and princes etc but they are rare.  we actually have an australian who went to a bar in sydney during the olympics, met a guy and he turned out to be the prince of denmark, she is now married and is due to be queen so it can happen LOL, but certainly they are smart enough to know pretend from reality and are being raised to be strong, independent girls.  as they get older the issue will be readdressed if need be, but i do not think dressing up as cinderella from age 2-8 will make them superficial or looking to run off with the first boy who "rescues them" from suburbia.  we have tons!! of barbies and all the disney princesses and my girls have never even noticed the boobs or body issues that are forever debated. i think that comes down to the rest of howthey are being raiseed. i never talk about weight, fat etc and watch biggest loser with them to discuss the health issues - they actually call it "mommy's healthy show"

tv / toys / friends everything comes down to what else is going on in your house as the kids are raised.  any of those things can be in an issue in a house where there is no love, no time invested, no good messages to balance or explain things, but in most families these things do not occur in a bubble so the kids are just fine. . 

[Katet]

Jenn that is interesting... I know my Boys fit in the watched TV catagory & are in NO WAY creative... but I never watched TV until I was 5yo (we didnt' have one) AND I am not creative or imaginative  either ... really struggled with trying to encourage it my boys... when you look at all our family we have strong "analytical" minds... my 7yo self taught his times tables before he turned 7 & my 5yo is well on the way to that too (from working out sporting averages BTW)

 DS1 is  & always has been a stickler for the rules (as was I & my sister)... so one could also extrapolate that a parent like me who wasn't exposed to creative play as a child (my Mum is so not imaginative) & is not strong on it herself wouldn't have exposed her children to it as much as say a friend (M) who does have a creative Dad (Artist), who has been exposed to TV, but writes the most amazing made up stories... my DS1 will only write no-fiction & when M has been to play she can get my boys involved in imaginative play but she is the "director" & they go along with her & take her lead.

So I do think the personalities of it would come in to it too, so if there was a child who said "Captain Hook said X" it that child was the dominant one the others would follow KWIM.

But by the same token my boys have been read Peter Pan for all their lives... I read it to DS1 from 3mo as part of his going to sleep routine... he could quote the book so Pirate play would be dictated by that... because he has never seen it on TV KWIM.

I agree with Deb, the biggest issue I see with DS1's peers is the "over organising" of children, the most problematic child in his class does FIVE extra cirriculum activities (at age 7) & his Mum says "because if he & his brother are at home all they do is fight" UMMM this child actually has NO IDEA how to play not on his terms & it really is a problem.

I actually would say if you give them plenty of opportunities to be children & play & be "free" to run around in open spaces & climb & be a child then a bit of TV is not that going to be that bad, esp if you pick wisely.

[MLK]

I was talking to a doctor recently who subscribes to the theory that ADHD is "nature deprivation" - from the lack of access to free unsupervised play outdoors. I think there is a book on the topic. So I guess TV/PC exposure could fit the bill  - BUT only if it comes at the expense of having unstructured play outside. And older kids really need unsupervised (or only loosely supervised) play, too.

So if your child is having lots of free play, esp outside, I wouldn't worry about the TV (unless of course he/she is refusing to do anything else.)

I was thinking the same thing about the pirate play - if they had read the book Peter Pan wouldn't they have followed the script too? My DS2 hardly watches any Thomas (his older brother dictates the TV!) but we read the books a lot - I've noticed he acts out the stories from the books with his trains.

[MLK]

Here's the book on "nature deficit disorder"

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Child-Woods-Children-Nature-Deficit/dp/156512605X/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285325642&sr=8-1

THe doc I was talking to (he's in his late 40s/early 50s) was telling me as a child he used to roam the streeets of Sydney with other kids from the age of 4 - not suggesting anyone nowadays should let their child roam the streets unsupervised from 4 yo, just mentioning to show how much society has changed.

[deb]

Oddly, Josie wouldn't watch TV till she was 2-1/2. That in itself is supposed to be one of the hallmarks of ADD or similar neuro issues. She wasn't interested, couldn't attend to it long enough to get diddly out of it.

Now the girls are older I do find it a relief for them to have something safe to do while I teach music lessons - I do chase them outside when I can and I know I should do more of it, and our backyard is fenced but right now we're infested with stinkbugs and mosquitoes and frankly none of us wants to be out there long, and our neighborhood is relatively safe but not safe enough that I feel OK about letting them spend the hours unsupervised that I did in my old neighborhood growing up.

That said, I do try to make an effort to limit screen time, and what they watch is markedly different from what their peers watch. At karate yesterday another kids's younger sister was offering to let Natalie play with her Leapster (which Nat had never seen before) and asked if she wanted to play the Dora game or the Ni Hao game or the star Wars game - and in true SyFy geek fashion, she picked Star Wars as she hasn't ever watched the others, has only heard of Dora in passing. Heck, they like Food Network! Seriously, I've started teaching a music lesson with them watching CyberChase and come out to find them watching Giada DiLaurentis! If only I could get them to appreciate the DIY channel we'd get along better TV-wise. LOL

[MLK]

I tihnk computer games/nintendo/xbox etc are worse than TV - for some reason it's very addicitve! We spent time with my brother a couple of months ago and DS1's cousin spent so much time on his DS - much to the annoyance of DS1, who wanted to play outside!

[Mashi]

I was thinking the same thing about the pirate play - if they had read the book Peter Pan wouldn't they have followed the script too? My DS2 hardly watches any Thomas (his older brother dictates the TV!) but we read the books a lot - I've noticed he acts out the stories from the books with his trains.

I wonder about this, too. My DS has never watched any "kitchen" cartoons but everytime we play kitchen (ie/ with his toy kitchen and plastic food) he wants things done a very certain and very exact way...and that particular way is the way the DH did it early on and made DS nearly wee his pants with laughter. So playing kitchen has to be just like that every time - and that's not come from TV.  When we play with his train set, he does things a hundred different ways every time or plays things in one certain way for a few days and then changes it up to a different way for a few days, and I assumed that was because he sees soooo many different things on Thomas that he knows there are all sorts of different things to play. 

[deb]

I do get a kick out of watching kids act out stories with toys. The first few times will often follow the script and then variations will often creep in as they begin to manipulate the story or the characters or the situations.

Mashi, maybe Mini-Mashi is one of those who doesn't "fit the mold." He has his own wavelength and agenda and stuff that makes him "tick." Josie was never regimented in that way, but she definitely has always had her own set of idiosyncracies.

[~*Nicole*~]

I do know that DD watches Calliou and acts out the scenes she remembers from that. We have a lot of torn pages in books b/c of the time Calliou and his little sister fought over a book in the library and tore it. By the same token, she is now afraid to sleep without her nightlight on b/c I read a Calliou book with her where he was afraid to sleep in the dark with his door closed.

Of course they pick these things up from EVERYWHERE. That's why we call them little sponges!

[MLK]

There is a chapter in the book Nuture shock (it's being discussed in another thread) that talked about a study done on kids who had watched a lot of "educational" TV - well those kids were actually more verbally aggressive than kids who watched "normal" TV. Why? because the educational TV was trying to give a moral message by showing kids fighting, teasing etc and how the kids resolved it. The problem is that the message goes over the heads of pre-schoolers and all they take out of it is the teasing and aggression!

So the message is - make sure the TV (or even books) shown to young kids is pretty innocuous - they are not going to be understanding moral stories at that age.

Sounds like the same thing happened to you Nicole - she wasn't scared of the dark until she read a story about a kid who conquered her fear of the dark.

[~*Nicole*~]

Lan-Exactly...and she of course missed the point of the book tearing lesson as well. They had to go to the librarian, admit their error and help fix the book. She just thinks imitating the WHOLE scene is fun b/c she is being like Calliou. Not realizing that she is breaking things and not doing the "right" thing!

[MLK]

Yep - most of those messages are really for school aged kids. I try to keep it to stuff like Wiggles or Night Garden - even the original Thomas stories were written for 6-7  yos.

Though it's unavoidable he watches some TV that his older brother chooses!