Post Punk Kitchen Forum

We do refinnej's method of math. Counting and adding and subtracting as we play, just part of the fun. Silas picked it all up really easily.

One more thing about the studies. The headline says to ban all screen time for kids under three, but every study I've ever seen, including the one referenced later in the article, says negative effects don't kick in until over two hours a day. I really don't understand where the researchers then get the notion that all screen time should be banned. It's not supported by their own research.

Except for moral issues, I just don't take an all or nothing approach to anything in my life, and I'm certainly not going to start with screen time when there is no evidence to support that position. I'm very comfortable with our one hour of tv plus some random youtube videos that my kids might request during the day. (My son has gotten oddly specific. Today he asked to see a video of a red Grand Torino in a car wash.)

What refinnej said about math - pre-math skills are all about pattern recognition (find the pattern, finish the pattern, repeat the pattern, what's missing in the pattern?), counting and number recognition, shapes and colors, etc.

Malka has definitely requested TV - I think she knows that TV time is like super downtime, snuggling time (she also requests books - much more often than TV, and I think it has a similar function, although she seems more invested in books overall and pretend reads - she doesn't pretend watch TV). I don't actually use TV as a distraction when I need to accomplish something. I use TV as background for my own benefit and then when I am totally desperate to lay down on the couch and close my eyes for a second I'll put on a cartoon that I know she'll get invested in. This is all blathering, but honestly, I'm much more concerned about Malka picking up my general couch potato-ness than having a particular investment in screens. When I'm not working, I definitely revert to shlubbiness and have a hard time getting going or doing anything productive. That's why it's so crucial for me to get out of the house with her on my day off, because otherwise I will sit around the house doing mostly nothing all day long. TV is just part of what fills in the nothingness. I am praying my child has more internal motivation than I do.

ETA: refinnej asked what our kids watch. Malka likes eebee's adventures (babies discovering stuff), Doc McStuffins (horrible name of a show about a little girl who doctors toys), some weird music show with kids, giant stuffed animals, and animation (it is horrible, but she is transfixed), and random PBS cartoons. Mostly she is attracted to: music, babies/toddlers, and animation.

Grey mostly watches PBS: dinosaur train (his favorite), Sid the science kid, Sesame Street, super why, and mr. Rogers. He has also watched fraggle rock, but mostly cause I wanted to watch it.

Oh, and when we went through that horrible period where he was waking up for the day at 3:30-4am he watched a lot of tv in the morning. I hate to admit that, but some mornings I would just lie on the floor next to him with the tv on.

No shame. I do this at 8am.

refinnej, for under 3's, the Numberjacks (only on youtube at the moment, I think), the NumTums (Raygold's second favourite show and all about numbers, kind of reminds me of an old-school Sesame Street animation), and the alphablocks (they have a great sub-website on cbeebies, although the site is kind of for older kids) are favourites here. Also, Humf (R's favourite), Max & Ruby, and The Adventures of Abney & Teal (which B acts along while watching it) are darling and wholesome, although not so educational. Octonauts and Chuggington are cute, but that's more the 2-3 year range, I'd guess. They also like Show Me Show Me (where basically Chris and Poi play around with toys and sing and try to get kids to interact with them and boy do my kids interact). When R was younger, he really liked Waybuloo -- that show gets a lot of flack from anti-Yoga/anti-new age folks, but my kids loved doing the poses.

R also really likes Special Agent Oso (goes over stuff like ordering in a restaurant and setting the table) and Team Umizoomi (lots of pattern-type stuff there and, OT, I really like the music)..

Dipdab are these weird, artsy shorts randomly shown on CBeebies that make my kids laugh and laugh.
I wish Boogie Beebies were still on -- it was a cute exercise show for kids that we loved!

OT, because this is for older kids, B is really into kids science programmes like Finding Stuff Out and Kid Detectives. Also, OT, anybody remember The Electric Company on PBS? I seem to remember learning to read a lot of words watching that show when I was really little.

C&S your post about the 120 minute minimum recap of My Little Pony cracked me up. It sounds like something I would have done when I was a kid.

I looooved the electric company!!

there is a great podcast, i think it airs on PBS in the US too, called Dragonfly TV- my daughter still talks about things she saw on there (we used to load buckets of them for plane rides). Also, Between the Lions, which someone told me is over?!

TCC those shows sound great! And Torque, what a great idea for plane rides.

TCC those shows sound great! And Torque, what a great idea for plane rides.

When I was in elementary school, I loved 3-2-1 Contact, both the magazine and the TV show. I recently watched some episodes on YouTube, and they're almost painfully late-eighties, in every detail. Like, neon pants and mullets and pseudo-rap.

I was really into Square One (the PBS maths show circa...1986/7) in 5th grade. I LOVED that show so much. I'm sure it would seem pretty 80s if I youtubed it now.

We have no TV but Older Girl does love watching nature documentaries and there a plenty of those we can find either online or at the library. I don't let her watch cartoons. Occasionally we watch a movie. That's about it. I know there are different needs though in different cases. She would watch stuff all day if we let her, but I limit it and encourage her to look at actual books and play with toys, and she seems to be doing ok with it.

I LOVED that show. It was awesome.

Thanks for tips on shows. CC, it's funny that you mention Humf. I had/have no idea what the hell that was, but Freya has a sunshade in the car with the characters on it, and for like a year I kept thinking that I needed to look it up. I did so today, and it sounds interesting. I like that the episodes are only 7 minutes long. We have done maybe 1 1/2 episodes of Abney and Teal too, but I think it's a bit old for her still. Timmy Time is the sheep show that she likes (really, it's barnyard animals, but the sheep are the stars). Hearing her little voice saying "baaaaaa" = melts my heart. :)

I hate it but Kai loves tv/ipad/iphone. I didn't want him watching any but no matter how many times I complained my ultra computer geek husband let him do it anyway, as well as the babysitter. And unlike how it sounds with a lot of the other kids in this thread, he LOVES tv. He will totally stare at it like a zombie, or watch thomas videos on youtube for as long as we let him. And he was always that way right from the start - for a while there it was the only thing he would do for longer than 5 minutes. It makes me so sad to watch him sitting there zoning out to the screen, I absolutely hate it.

Thanks to my constant complaining it is only a few shows a day. I've finally convinced my husband to only let him on screens in the morning while we get ready. It is off limits in the evening. I figure this is good prep for later when he's in school and needs to do homework, at least he'll be used to not watching at night. He watches a bit more in the mornings on the weekend since he gets up at 6 or so and it takes us a while to get going. And we've been reading him at least 2 books per night since he was about 3 months old, so at least there's that.

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure he is on the ipad a lot with the babysitter too. On the upside he takes them to the park once or twice a day when the weather is nice, so he is still really active.

This is another reason I'm really excited about him going into a new daycare, where I know he won't be getting any screen at all. I can never get whatever it did to his brain development in the 1st two years back, but at least it will be better from now on.

That said, I'm a researcher and so I've looked into the research on this topic quite a bit. Although they make these recommendations to limit, and do believe it may cause long term changes in brain development, like potentially short attention span, etc - there is no smoking gun as far as that kind of effect yet. I do recall one study that showed background tv, especially adult-oriented programming, can distract children from playing - they counted how many times the kids looked up from what they were doing (even for a second) and it was a lot more than kids did when there was no tv on. Also of course the famous spongebob study that showed kids who watched this fast-paced cartoon had impared executive functioning vs. kids who watched a slower-paced PBS show or colored.

But otherwise from what I've read it is really more of an educated guess at this point, and saying limit it just to be safe, along with the fact that time spent watching tv takes away from interaction with parents. So though some studies point to some possible negative effects, it may only be with certain types of shows, amount of watching, etc - and there really are more questions than answers at this point.

Especially in the first article the OP posted, that guy hasn't even done his own research - his cut out all tv recommendation seems like more of an opinion.

OMG. I just finished writing that post and walked into the living room to see my husband wearing this:

http://www.neurosky.com/Products/MindWave.aspx

I shiitake you not. He is controlling the computer (which is actually our tv) with his brain!! He bought it with a thinkgeek gift certificate he got for christmas. How the hell did I end up marrying this guy lol??

I am like, you are NOT putting that thing on kai!!!

Same here. I know there is no hard evidence, but we are trying to avoid screen time because of the worries about attention span/lack of engagement with the boring real world. As a teacher, I've had so many students addicted to screens (and not interested with anything else) that I would like to put it off as long as possible. It is so hard to keep her away from the phones. I try to keep it out of sight but she has a radar for it.

Me too! I loved the "Mathematics of Love" skit.

Also, 3-2-1 Contact was pretty rad.

The two most "proven" outcomes of too much television at an early age seem to be weight/health issues (related to couch potatoism), and language development impairment. Some effects of exposure to violent images are well documented as well, but I think that's another issue altogether. Limiting the amount of time kids spend with screens and choosing programs wisely can counteract both the fitness and language issues, imo (both as a mom and from my studies in language development in infants/toddlers). Choosing shows that are interactive, watching tv with your kids, talking about it later (sorry c&s), all help to *build* language development in one way.

One of the things that bothered me the most when I taught the 4-6 year old ages, was that overexposure to television seemed to really cramp the style of dramatic play sometimes. I don't mean just that kids adopted the identities of the characters, because kids do that with books, etc. anyway. Rather, there often seemed to be a tendency toward doing it the "right" way...the "actors in the play" had to follow the script that was shown on the TV program, film, whatever. Now I suppose you could argue that the memorization involved in this activity was a learning tool in its own way, but the lack of spontaneity made me quite sad.

I've been wrestling with this myself. Before having guinepiglet I was completely and totally anti-TV for kids. But I have to say I can really see the value in a lot of children's programming. I think it's all about what they're watching and what the TV watching is taking the place of. As someone else said if your kid is watching TV all day and not playing with toys, interacting with others, learning from his/her enviroment, etc. then it will probably pose a problem. For me, as a single mom, television has been a lifesaver. Sprout has little 10 minute shows on demand with comcast in english and in spanish so if I'm rushing in the morning and need to get out the house and guineapiglet is just not letting me get everything done 10 minutes of an educational program works out fine. I make sure to keep an ear to the TV so I can help reinforce whatever she is learning. I think I have some guilt over it because she only watches TV when I'm just too busy and really need to get something done like get dinner cooked, get things together to leave the house, etc. On Saturday's and Sunday's she does watch Plaza Sesamo. For me that's important as she is being raised multi-lingual but I am not proficient enough to speak to her in Spanish full time when we're at home so with a program like Plaza Sesamo she gets a time tested educational component and the language.

Her most adorable TV watching habit thus far is turning off the TV herself when she's had enough of it (or when she doesn't like what I'm watching). If it's one of the longer shows like Plaza Sesamo around the 20 minute mark if she's not interested anymore she gets up, turns it off and goes to play with her toys or picks up a book.

There were many a day this fall when guineapiglet would get up at 6am and would be wide awake and ready for the world - Plaza Sesamo saved my life! That's really how she was introduced to television, through an exhausted mom who would do anything for an extra 30 minutes of sleep on a Saturday morning after an impossibly exhasting week. Thankfully, she's back on team "let's sleep in until 8-9) on the weekends again. Let's see how long that last.

Guilty. Lu will be two years old next month, and we have allowed some daily tv/screen time for quite a while now. I try not to beat myself up too much about it. We never let television babysit him, and we typically only watch our adult shows after he goes to bed at night so there isn't background tv, and we don't have cable (only Netflix streaming) so there are no commercials to capture his attention. Our after dinner routine includes letting him watch his favorite show while we clean up, which is Yo Gabba Gabba. He LOVES this show. He dances along, claps, follows the games, and names all the characters. It's nice to see him enjoying himself and not just zoned out gape mouthed at a screen. On a rainy day or something we will also do a Sesame Street episode in the afternoon. It's always less than two hours a day, and not more than 40 minutes at one time.
...okay, maybe I do feel a little guilty. But hey. We do what we can.

I really think all tv programming is not created equally. PBS kids has some great programs that are educational. I think there is a big difference between an episode of WordWorld and an episode of Sponge Bob. Same with online stuff. Starfall.com is a great site for educational games btw if you are looking for limited computer time.

I wonder what we'll do with the future kiddo especially with the various sports programming that will be on in the house. The TV will definitely be on, especially as background noise.

The one thing I do worry a little about, as a teacher, is that some kids are so used to being entertained from TV, ipads etc that they can't sustain attention. We try our best to be entertaining while teaching, but we just can't compete.

That's interesting. My 27 mo. old son loves yo gabba, but he only occasionally participates. I was wondering if it was because he was too young, but sounds like that isn't it. Once in a while he'll jump up and dance, but it never lasts long. He only recently has started participating with Dora - but he just kind of says "yes" when he sees something, or mumbles a bit...

The fact that he just sits there and zones out to it so much is really what gets me upset when he's watching.



Me too. My super geek husband has almost no attention span. Like when I suggest he plays fetch with our dog, he can only do it for about a minute before he loses interest and starts doing something else. I don't even think he realizes how quickly he does it. I guess it hasn't harmed his life that much since he got good grades in grad school and has a good job, but still I don't think it is a good thing to get our son hooked this early. My husband did start programming when computers first became available in the 80's, but he was already in high school.

One of the main things that recently convinced him to my side of things was I read an article about how all the big time computer guys in california send their kids to waldorf schools to learn woodworking and stuff instead of technology. The thought is develop them into smart, capable well rounded adults first and they can sit in front of a screen all they want later. Whereas, if you sit them in front of the screen all day first, they may never be able to learn the rest.

The 2nd thing was visiting his cousins over the holidays this year, with a 7 and 2 year old. They don't have any reservations about screen time and let the kids watch movies and play video games as much as they want. This year was the first year everyone had their own ipads and it was amazing the stark difference in interaction. Everyone just sat around on their devices and hardly even talked.I think it was really noticeable because we only see them 1x per year, so the difference was really shocking, enough to even get through to my husband. I don't want our family life to be like that in 5 years.

I see families like that in restaurants all the time! It scares me, too.

I think phones and iPads are worse than tv, in terms of sucking you in. At least with tv you might be watching something together.