Letters to the Editor
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Good and Bad TV
I don't think we can generalize about the issue by saying that TV is ok, bad, or neutral for children, any more than we can say reading is better for them. It depends on what they watch, and what they read. There are junky, mind-candy books just as there are poor television programs. I'm not sure that watching an educational TV program, such as something on the History Channel or Discovery Channel, is any worse than reading yet another book in a long fantasy series. That fantasy book might be enjoyable, but far more escapist than many TV shows.
When my son was small, we used to watch Mr. Rogers together in the afternoon, and he saw things on that show I would never be able to show him, like how trumpets and toothpaste are made. He became fascinated by how things work and where they come from. He became interested in puppets because of that show, and when he was old enough he and his friends wrote and put on their own puppet shows. Because he was in danger of becoming a math and science nerd, I also watched The Simpsons with him, which, believe it or not, helped him socially because he could converse with his friends about the latest episode as easily as he could explain complicated math to them when they were having trouble with their homework. A certain amount of pop culture awareness is actually beneficial to kids. We also had some kids' videos, and yes, I put them on from time to time when I needed some uninterrupted time to cook or do other household chores that required a little free time and hands.
The interesting thing to me is that now that he's ready to graduate from high school, he has virtually no interest in TV and goes months without turning it on. So a few hours a week when he was a toddler didn't turn him into a zombie TV-watcher at all. I think the trick is to expose kids to other activities, and if they have any innate curiosity they'll become too interested in other things to waste too much time with TV. Once he got involved with music and chess, he preferred spending his free time doing those things. In other words, I think the way people react to TV says more about them, than it does about TV.
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Thanks blueskies
You're right, I'm not lying. My son really truly didn't watch much TV, and still doesn't. We don't have cable, we don't allow TV during the week (except for the odd episode of NOVA), and they watch a little public TV on the weekends until they get bored and turn it off on their own (usually after an hour or so).
If TV "causes" ADHD... how does one explain my brother, my husband, his brother, and very likely my paternal grandmother, who all have ADHD (OK, grandma was never diagnosed, but all I had to do was describe her behaviors and it's pretty obvious), and were raised before TV? I had a team of specialists at our children's behavioral clinic tell us we had the strongest family history of ADHD they'd ever seen.
I won't deny there's probably a correlation between TV and ADHD, and I don't think it's well understood yet. But these articles do imply that kids can "catch" it from TV... and that just ain't so. If it is, in our TV saturated world, why is it that there are still one or two kids in every classroom who are a couple powers of 10 beyond the norm of their peer group in activity level?
These articles and the posters in these threads like to describe the "epidemic" of ADHD and ritalin prescriptions. I have yet to meet one parent of an ADHD child who gave their child medication lightly, or without years of research, other options, trying everything they could think of first. The tone of "I think I'll just go out and get some meds for my kid, he's bugging me today" is thoughtless and ill-informed.
Being the parent of "the weird kid" in every class, who can't make friends, can't do school work, and generally feels like a goof-up at everything, is heartbreaking. A friend's child came home from school last week and asked his mom "Why don't people like me?" He has ADHD and a host of other problems, and is in 4th grade. What a thing for a kid to realize about himself.
Anyway, blueskies, thanks for the support.
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Uh, am I the only one who gets things done without a TV?
Seriously, what is up? You can't empty the dishwasher without a television? Why not? How else are kids going to learn how to entertain themselves if you don't stop entertaining them and leave them to their own devices? Answer- they won't!
Look. I shower daily. I study for exams while being at home with my daughter. I alternate reading books to her and engaging in her stories with doing my own work, making phone calls, and doing chores. And I have not had a TV of my own for 15 years. And I'm not some kind of uber-devoted parent, either. Just a normal person who has taught her child that she can't be engaged by others 24 hours a day so she better learn to create her own fun.
I'm with the person who said they don't let their kids drink in moderation. TV sucks. It's a corporate view of reality. It says, "Kids don't need their own imaginations, they need adults who want to sell things to imagine for them!" There's no such thing as TV in moderation. Even a little adult imagination direction destroys the amazing, unique imaginative capabilities of individual children.
And you know what, adults too should throw out their TVs for their own sakes. Read a good book. Sit down at the piano or with a guitar. Look out the window and hum to yourself. Just chill out without filling your brain with crap. TV takes up valuable brain space, and time you could spend living a more interesting life. Throw it out.