Passive Entertainment and Brain Development
Studies by Dimetri Christakis at the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle have determine that the brain need touch, hearing, seeing, smelling, and tasting stimulus to grow fully.
Dr. Christakis has also determined that from birth to age seven for every "hour of television watched per day, the incidence of ADD and ADHD increased by 10 percent."
Now consider the following data.
- The average American child spends 900 hours a year in school and 1,023 hours a year watching television.
- In the average American home, the TV is on 6.7 hours per day.
- By the time a boy reaches eighteen years of age, he'll have spent 22,000 hours watching television. That is more than any other activity besides sleeping.
- The number of videos and DVDs families rent every day is twice the number of books read.
- By the age of sixteen, the average boy will have seen 200,000 acts of violence on television, 33,000 of them acts of murder.
- One fourth of children under two years of age have a television in their bedrooms.
- Two thirds of preschool boys sit in front of screens for more than two hours per day. That is more than 3 times the hours they spend looking at books or being read to.*
posted by Reg Adkins | 6:40 PM
2 Comments:
So how do you counteract this as a parent? I'm a single dad and my son is 4.
I've taken to setting strict time limits for the TV and specific allowed shows that I have seen several episodes of. I also discuss the shows with him regularly so he understands the content is pretend and to see what his comprehension is.
I read to him at least once a day and try to have him read along with me.
But as for getting him to play outside - that's tough! I'm a single dad and I fear that if he is out and about outside, he might be abducted or something. I can't constantly know his whereabouts when he's outside.
Many families are working so much that all they can rely on is the flickering blue babysitter. I think this situation is really just a symptom of a society out of balance. People have to work such long hours, have little concept of the difference between need and want, being told we can all have careers AND family. Maybe those things need to be revisted. But let's talk about that after SpongeBob is over. ;-)
I understand your distress. It is a tough issue. One of the first steps you can take is to provide "toys" that are more maniupulative in nature. Think wrenches, blocks, soup cans....
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home