Television has become such a major part of
life that many American parents use it as a babysitter, and that has child
psychologists concerned. A new study shows that almost one-third of
families have TVs in children's' bedrooms, and the number of television
programs geared toward infants is growing. VOA's Melinda Smith has more on
the recommendation of how much TV should be allowed, and at what
age.
Katie Weaver has her hands full. Four children in her
kitchen ... two of them are hers ... all of them are under the age of six
... and thirsty at the same time.
It's enough to get on the
nerves of any adult. Like many of the 1,000 parents surveyed in a
Kaiser Family Foundation study, Katie admits she sometimes uses TV as a
pacifier
when her children are overly-excited ...
and it usually works.
"I don't use it as a babysitter because they don't watch enough or long
enough for that, but if they are very hyped up ... sometimes I'll use TV
to calm 'em down," she said.
While there has been some concern that watching too much television
fosters obesity in children, the long-term effects of parking a very young
child in front of the 'tube' are not clear.
Child psychologist Stanley Greenspan is worried that some parents are
taking the easy way out.
"A lot of them are two-parent working
families, so we're talking about having very little time with the
children, and if that time is used in front of a screen, rather than
interactively ... it's compromising the way these children are learning to
pay attention ... the way they're learning to problem-solve ... and most
importantly, the way they're learning to think and use language," he said.
Katie Weaver's two children - five-year-old Andrew and three-year-old
Daisy -- watch an average of an hour a day, five days a week. It is the
same for friend Jack and brother Carter who are visiting.
In the survey, parents of children much younger ... up to a year old
... report viewing averages of an hour per day. For kids one to two years,
it's close to an hour and a half.
Greenspan believes babies and children under the age of two should not
be watching at all and he's worried that some parents are concealing the
real truth.
"If anything, it's an underestimation, because people would be aware
that for kids under one, it's not the greatest thing in the world, so they
would tend to ... if a kid's watching two hours, they might say an hour
... so I think what we're getting is a minimal estimate," he said.
Television programming for very young children has been
increasing. Yet one researcher involved in the Kaiser study says there is
still no evidence that children up to the age of two learn anything of
value from television. Katie Weaver says her kids have too much physical
energy to sit and watch television for very long. In warmer weather,
they're more often outside.
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