how, well that is true. We are both on the same page about this. We also have been preparing DS that when the new baby is here the baby can't watch TV or use the ipad, so he won't be able to use it when the baby is awake. He (as in DS) seems okay with that but we shall see lol.
Another question. When your first child was a newborn does this mean you yourself didn't watch TV while your newborn was awake (and say nursing)? TV is how I got through the NB phase!! This is all non snarky. Just curious.
Ha, no I watched TV when he was a newborn. Well, until he started to notice the screen. So I guess we stopped around 3 months or so? I can't really remember when it was now. DH was home with me for 3 months of maternity leave and after that I was basically out and about every day, so it wasn't overly hard.
I think part of the problem here is that as katfco pointed out, the article begins by talking about true screen addiction to sensationalize and get readers, and then moves on to discussing giving your 8 year old a phone to play with during a car trip. Screen addiction is a real problem yes, but letting your kid play video games for an hour probably won't make them an addict. So we're talking about three different levels of screen "addiction", true addiction, a regular or even extreme habit, and an occasional activity.
And again, while there are probably disadvantages to letting your kid have access to screen time, a small loss of IQ points, or less focus, or whatever, I would imagine unless you are testing these in a lab, most people aren't going to notice much of a difference between the two groups until you start getting into the extremes. The same way that listening to classical music may help students do better on a test, but listening to classical music isn't going to magically turn you into a genius. And since we don't live in a lab setting, you can also mitigate those problems by actually interacting with your children on the regular, finding enrichment activities to do with them, etc.
Basically, I feel like there is a lot of fear-mongering going on overall when it comes to screen time. And while it's not the greatest thing ever, it's also not the worst thing you could expose your child too either.
how, well that is true. We are both on the same page about this. We also have been preparing DS that when the new baby is here the baby can't watch TV or use the ipad, so he won't be able to use it when the baby is awake. He (as in DS) seems okay with that but we shall see lol.
Honestly, I wouldn't have gotten through maternity leave with an older child at home without screen time. He watched tons of PBS kids and played waaaaaay too much Disney Infinity. It was NBD once he started school and I went back to work and we reverted back to the regular rules of screen time. You do what you have to do. Don't beat yourself up if you need to give yourself a break by letting your older child have screen time once the baby arrives.
Oh, he will be in full time preschool while I am on maternity leave and DH is home for a few months so he can obviously entertain DS when he is home. But yeah, I get what you are saying. I just don't want him to watch more TV than he is watching now
My 8yo is constantly looking for a screen whenever he has "down" time. By down time I mean, waiting in a line at a store for more than a couple minutes, in the car for more than a short drive, or in the waiting room at the dentist office. It's like, the moment he's bored, he wants something to occupy his attention. So while I think the bit in the article about how time in the car is better spent thinking, imagining, and planning (sorry I didn't C&P so I don't remember the exact verbiage) was worded in an unnecessarily provocative way, I do agree with the sentiment. I think it's good to be bored once in a while, and just interacting with the world around us is important generally as well.
I wouldn't call my son's behavior an addiction, but it is definitely annoying. And probably not good.
how, well that is true. We are both on the same page about this. We also have been preparing DS that when the new baby is here the baby can't watch TV or use the ipad, so he won't be able to use it when the baby is awake. He (as in DS) seems okay with that but we shall see lol.
Do you think this plan could backfire? In that he may resent the new baby?
Letting DD (3 yo) only watch TV while DS napped backfired for us. As DS started to become more independent and play on the floor, she would push or hit him. When he cried, she would say that he was tired and needed nap and could she please watch TV now. :? We cut back to no TV most days.
I think it's easy to say all the researchers are overreacting, and that articles like this are fear-mongering and misleading, in part because sometimes they are, and the effects are usually subtle, but there's so much research out there that says even moderate amounts of TV and screen time (particularly passive screen time) has negative effects. This list has links to some of the studies that examined attention, violence, and other long-term effects: www.cracked.com/article_18856_6-shocking-ways-tv-rewires-your-brain.html
I know we have screens on way too much of the time and I'm working on making sure we all cut back, but it's hard to fight the habits of my own upbringing.
Do you think this plan could backfire? In that he may resent the new baby?
Letting DD (3 yo) only watch TV while DS napped backfired for us. As DS started to become more independent and play on the floor, she would push or hit him. When he cried, she would say that he was tired and needed nap and could she please watch TV now. :? We cut back to no TV most days.
Oh, that isn't good! I have no issue going to zero screen time at all (I kind of think that will happen anyway). But as of now, he doesn't ask for any time during the day, so hopefully that will continue! I think he doesn't realize that the TV can go on after 8am lol.
Post by StrawberryBlondie on Jul 6, 2015 13:21:33 GMT -5
I admit i side eye the hell out of the vans i see in the mornings with Elmo playing in the back seat. Given the location i see them, these people have been in the car for, at most, 5-10 minutes.
My kid is only 15 months, but lord help me if she can't be content in the car for a quick trip to daycare in the morning.
I admit i side eye the hell out of the vans i see in the mornings with Elmo playing in the back seat. Given the location i see them, these people have been in the car for, at most, 5-10 minutes.
My kid is only 15 months, but lord help me if she can't be content in the car for a quick trip to daycare in the morning.
I'll admit, I've used given DS a screen for a short 5-10 minute trip before. It helps avoid having DS fall asleep between the grocery store and the house, because if he fell asleep, and woke up during transfer it meant no nap for the entire day, and an awful awful evening. No regrets!
Thank god we are at a point now where that is not an issue, kid snores and drools on my neck now when I carry him into the house after he's fallen asleep.
But yes, our usual rule is no screens in the car unless the trip is three hours or more.
I admit i side eye the hell out of the vans i see in the mornings with Elmo playing in the back seat. Given the location i see them, these people have been in the car for, at most, 5-10 minutes.
My kid is only 15 months, but lord help me if she can't be content in the car for a quick trip to daycare in the morning.
I'll admit, I've used given DS a screen for a short 5-10 minute trip before. It helps avoid having DS fall asleep between the grocery store and the house, because if he fell asleep, and woke up during transfer it meant no nap for the entire day, and an awful awful evening. No regrets!
Thank god we are at a point now where that is not an issue, kid snores and drools on my neck now when I carry him into the house after he's fallen asleep.
But yes, our usual rule is no screens in the car unless the trip is three hours or more.
I kind of think this is a little different too (though i admit I'd probably judge if i saw it). What I'm talking about is at like 7:45 am on weekdays on city streets that you would only be on if you lived in the neighborhood.
I'm trying really hard not to whip out my phone around baby H if we're out in public and waiting in line or something. She's already obsessed enough with pressing the buttons.
@bunnybean - I think we discussed that article last week or two weeks ago.
Must have missed it! I think it brings up better points than this other one.
Ha, well probably because you agree with it and it supports your parenting philosophy Which is fine, but the 538 study also dismisses a lot of real research out there and misinterprets the APP statement. I just really dislike the 538 article and feel like it is just a lot of justifications w/out a lot of real evidence to back it up
When I was a kid, my parents had strict television rules: no more than an hour a day, and the content must be educational. This meant a lot of PBS. I did briefly convince my mother that the secret-agent show “MacGyver” was about science, but that boondoggle ended when she watched an episode with me. These restrictions seemed severe at the time, but my parents were just following the orders of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): Children and teens should have no more than one to two hours of screen time per day, with children under 2 having no screen time at all. Those orders remain the same today.
Relative to my childhood, limits on screen time have become increasingly restrictive and confusing. The iPad (and Kindle, and various other tablets) has opened up a world of “educational” screen time. If my 4-year-old is doing a workbook on the iPad, does that mean she learns less than if we used a physical workbook? The AAP advocates for newspapers and physical books over iPads, computers and other screen options.
The AAP statement on media seems opposed to screens per se (quote: “young children learn best when they interact with people, not screens”) without really differentiating among various uses and types of screens. But, not surprisingly, when you look at the research, the screen matters less than what you do with it.
Of all the possibilities for screen time, television watching clearly gets the most negative attention. It’s not hard to see why. Unlike educational games on a tablet, which at least can be argued to have some interactive value, television and movie watching are largely passive. Those who oppose TV for children worry about many downsides, but chief among them are declines in test scores (or other cognitive ability) and increases in obesity.
Let’s consider a few examples. This paper relates television viewing among preschoolers to measures of “executive function” — basically, whether a kid can focus and accomplish a goal — and finds that more television exposure is associated with lower executive function. This one looks at a large sample of children and associates television viewing at younger than 3 years with lower test scores at ages 6 and 7. And this one relates television watching to obesity among children.
These are a small number of the many, many studies that show associations between time spent watching television and health and development outcomes. But all these studies have an obvious problem: the amount of TV children watch is not randomly assigned. In the general population, kids who watch a lot of TV — especially at young ages — tend to be poorer, are more likely to be members of minority groups and are more likely to have parents with less education. All these factors independently correlate with outcomes such as executive function, test scores and obesity, making it difficult to draw strong conclusions about the effects of television from this research. .
This person doesn't cite articles to back up his/her point. All the writer does is say, "There aren't a ton of studies out there." Except there are. While there may not be a ton of studies about test scores and IQ points, there are plenty of studies that focus on attention span that address even moderate TV watching. There are large sample studies, longitudinal studies, studies that controlled for poverty---so, lots of studies.
I'll admit, I've used given DS a screen for a short 5-10 minute trip before. It helps avoid having DS fall asleep between the grocery store and the house, because if he fell asleep, and woke up during transfer it meant no nap for the entire day, and an awful awful evening. No regrets!
Thank god we are at a point now where that is not an issue, kid snores and drools on my neck now when I carry him into the house after he's fallen asleep.
But yes, our usual rule is no screens in the car unless the trip is three hours or more.
I kind of think this is a little different too (though i admit I'd probably judge if i saw it). What I'm talking about is at like 7:45 am on weekdays on city streets that you would only be on if you lived in the neighborhood.
I'm trying really hard not to whip out my phone around baby H if we're out in public and waiting in line or something. She's already obsessed enough with pressing the buttons.
Judge away! Kids are alive and I'm still sane. If that is the worst thing I get judged for when it comes to parenting (which I can guarantee it's not) then I'll call it a win.
karinothingkatfco, it speaks to the point @mrsbecky brought up. The AAP and other orgs dont address moderation. And none of these studies seem to control for socioeconomic factors to my knowledge.
The link I posted does have links to studies that control for socioeconomic factors. Organizations do address moderation, but they don't define it, and that can be a problem. But I think one of the reasons they don't define it is because no one knows for sure what is or isn't an appropriate amount of screen time for kids. When it comes to longitudinal studies and kids, there just isn't enough research to say if 1 hour a day has the same effect as 3 hours a day, or if it's that fourth hour that does it, or if any screen time at all is detrimental.
It's like with eating sweets. Everyone will likely agree that a diet free of sweets is probably best for the body, but that's unreasonable and no fun, but when saying, "Everything in moderation," just what does that moderation mean?
karinothingkatfco, it speaks to the point @mrsbecky brought up. The AAP and other orgs dont address moderation. And none of these studies seem to control for socioeconomic factors to my knowledge.
The AAP DOES address moderation, it even talks about how to craft family plans for healthy TV/screen time. The statement just says no TV before 2. So, yes no moderation discussion at that point, but there hasn't been a study that shows benefits to TV before 2 and one shouldn't just discount the AAP study because it is extreme for 2 whole years of a child's life when it talks about reasonable media watching after 2.
And as @katfoc mentions, the studies do control for poverty. I feel like there is this need on this board to discount all studies about everything other than vaccines and I don't really get it.
DS1 loves tv and movies, and our tv is on most of the time we're at home. I don't love it, but he also doesn't camp out in front of the tv. He will pick a show then go into his playroom where he can't see the tv but can hear it. He mostly listens to shows, not watches. I don't know if that's better, but I'm not overly concerned about it. I certainly don't think it's going to lead to a basement-dweller gaming 24 hours a day.
I'm sorry, but calling this an "addiction" is over the top.
Depends on the kid.
My nephew is like an addict around his screentime, especially his gaming. He will disappear into Minecraft and will become completely disengaged from those around him. His dad, ever the enabler, actually brought an XBox from home for him to a family party (like 5-6 hours) where he would have 6 other cousins with whom he could play. The kid did little more than grunt at anyone there. He will lie to gain additional time on the iPad or gaming system. His brother doesn't have this issue- he likes games but likes people better.
There's also the issue with the blue light emitted by devices that can interfere with sleep quality.
Post by fancynewbeesly on Jul 7, 2015 6:58:39 GMT -5
This is one thing I completely refuse to feel guilty over. DD didn't get THAT much before two; and then at 2.5 was in the hospital for about three weeks. And then was home with me for roughly 12 WEEKS---with limited outside contact...due to a compromised immune system. If we went out it was to the doctors and maybe one time every couple of weeks. Being stuck inside with a near three year old just the two of us, during the winter. NOPE. We were in survival mode.
She has her own Ipad and Leap pad and everything else that kept us sane. Now that things are settling down more, we are finding a balance. She will go off and play by herself---usually the Ipad/tv is more in the morning before we wake up completely on the weekends. And quiet time on the weekends (since she refuses to feel to nap)
But I refuse to feel guilty. There is only so much I can interact with my own kid. And when I was home with her for the 12 weeks last year, DH was working 9am-7pm, I needed downtime too. And since I was a teacher, those 12 weeks pretty much ran into my summer break with limited indoor/crowd exposure. So not guilty.
Right now her favorite apps are youtube kids and netflix. Most of the preschool educational ones she grew out of REALLY quickly.
When DD was smaller we bought one of those plastic toys you can put your iPhone in so she wouldn't break it. Nowadays sometimes I just don't want to entertain her because I have things I need to get accomplished and if she can't entertain herself I am guilty of handing her my phone so she can watch those silly shows on Youtube like that disney collector lady whose voice drives me nuts. LOL.
TV is really only watched at meal times unless she would want to watch a movie during the afternoon hours. If TV is not being watched I turn it off mainly to save on electricity.