Why not TV?

Ooooh, how I love a little bit of controversy! I had no idea there were such strong feelings on this topic until I read my last post's comments. So I was kind of joking about the "I hope she recovers" bit, but I wasn't kidding when I said that too much TV at an early age leads to ADD/ADHD. Studies do say that because on the screen things are generally shown to be more fast-paced and more dynamic than real life, little children begin to expect their reality to be what they've seen on the screen. So when it comes time to sit still in a school setting and their teacher isn't zipping all over the classroom with color/environmental changes every nanosecond, the child is "bored."

I read those studies before I became a mother, and D and I decided it would be better for our kids if we could avoid TV exposure under the age of two (this was the age the studies cited as kind of the cut-off age for the results mentioned above, although I suspect attention problems could develop at any age if there was too much TV exposure). Then I had my firstborn. I noticed in her first few months how fascinated she was with the screen. I also noticed that she would not self-entertain. She didn't want to sit there and play with toys by herself, no matter how interesting the toy was or how often I switched toys. As a result, I spent most of my days doing everything with her. Sure, I could've given in and used the screen as a babysitter, and it would have left me free to do other things with my time, but guess what? She has learned to self-entertain! She has an active imagination and now she isn't very interested in the screen (although we're not totally in the clear as you may have noticed from her fixated gaze in the last post). What she needed was to experience REAL LIFE, so I gave her that gift despite the sacrifice of my own personal time. My second baby isn't nearly as interested in the screen as his sister was. I don't know that he needs the same "no TV before age two" rule, but I figure that it can't hurt to have him experience real life also, so that's what we do.

We don't have a TV in our house and I love it! D and I occasionally watch movies on the computer, but I've found that life is better when more of it's real. I don't know that things will always be this way--I've been very fortunate to have healthy pregnancies and births so I haven't yet needed to use the TV as a babysitter--but since we're currently able to live without a TV, we do.


A little P.S. (even though this isn't "script"):
"Where's the research?" This is what I say when I hear people claim, "Studies say..." When I first published this post, I didn't feel like finding an article to link to this, but I found this one today by googling "TV ADHD."

First Haircut (finally!) and DVD

The stars finally aligned themselves and I was able to cut Squeak's hair. D was the photographer, I was the stylist, and a Baby Einstein DVD (gasp!) was the distraction from the scissors. Yes, I am such a bad mother for letting my child watch a DVD, even with the knowledge that too much TV time for youngsters contributes to ADD/ADHD problems. We hope she recovers!

Here are some "after" shots
Squeak's pretty excited about her new 'do! We also think she looks even more like her dad (and his sisters) now that she has bangs.

Some "before" shots. She didn't inherit the hairy back from me!

Notice how fixated she is on the DVD. Yikes!

I had some trouble rearranging the photos. That is to say that after I uploaded the photos, I couldn't switch them around. Too bad!