Letters to the Editor
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TV or not TV?
I was born in late '61, and as a military brat, I lived in places where there was either no TV or limited transmission hours. We had radio, and my mom would play with me one-on-one, even teaching me words out of the newspaper. I was able to read simple sentences by the age of 3. In school, I was a good student -ADHD had not been 'invented' yet. Also, I ate food which had regular ingredients in it in small servings- no High Fructose Corn Syrup or giant servings. I remember that Oreos and Chips Ahoy were about the size of a silver dollar, and did not have the 'crap' ingredients in them. Nor did the milk have hormones in it.
My brother, who is nine years my junior, had a lot of TV time as a kid. We were back in the US by then, and he was glued to it. In school, he had trouble paying attention, and was labeled 'hyperactive', since he could not sit and pay attention. Around that time, food companies started putting HFCS into foods- and while my brother did not become obese (thank the hyperactivity for that), it was clear the these ingredients and the growing serving sizes were generating more and more obese kids.
Mom could not use the TV as a 'baby sitter' for my sister and I- she used a playpen to keep us in a safe place, and we learned to entertain ourselves. Our toys didn't talk, flash or move unless we did that ourselves. The only thing that needed batteries was the flashlight. Everything else wound up. (We had some really cool Japanese wind-up robots.)
If there's a 'downside' to my lack of early TV time, it's the 'gap' in my knowledge of TV trivia during most of the sixties. I'd rather have that than a short attention span. I was twelve when we finally got back to the US and regular TV broadcasts. By then, my reading and radio habits were set- and are still with me today. NPR loves me.