This is Cole's guilty pleasure. He gets to sit in Mommy's bed and watch Curious George while I take a shower and get ready in the morning. It is his favorite program, and I get the security of know I have 20-30 minutes that he probably won't climb on something and hurt himself.
My kid is allowed to watch T.V. Sometimes I need a moment and forbidden fruit being what it is, I am not opposed to television watching by toddlers (in moderation, of course). This is something I think about quite often and bring up as a discussion at dinner.
Cole has learned to turn the television on and then climb in the recliner or my bed. We are learning when we may or may not watch television at the moment. This morning Cole turned on the Today Show (he is not good at navigating the channels). Before I turned it off (I do not like that show on the account of their segments on the war and completely biased reporting), I saw they were going to do a segment on toddlers watching television, so I decided I wanted to see what they had to say, hoping they had good research to end my eternal interal struggle of such a medium. Here is a link for the segment:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18556971/. Lauch the video clip to the right of the page.
After watching it, I had some of my own thoughts. I am not normally an emailer to big companies like that, but I disagreed with several of their comments and the way it was presented.
So here is what I wrote back to them. It is lengthy, so feel free to skip or skim, but I thought I would add my two cents in the Great Television Debate.
Dear Today Show:
I am writing in response to your report on the amount of T.V. that toddlers watch. I appreciate the topic, as it is something that I am concerned about myself as a stay-at-home mother. It is nice to see your interest in bringing up well-educated, well-rounded children. However, there were many problems with what you reported. I know in you want to be successful in your efforts to bring effective and correct information to the public.
In your report, you presented several useful facts, such as the amount of television parents allowed their children under two to watch (90% of children allowed to watch an hour and a half a day). These facts, while interesting, were simply that: interesting facts. You provided no research as to what these programs were, if they were educational or somehow helpful to the children, or what the long term effects of these programs might be.
The overall tone of the report seemed to view television as a guilty pleasure parents (specifically mothers) allowed just to have a “babysitter,” while you offered no facts to determine if this was harmful to the children. Television has long been viewed as negative in our society, and you allowed that to speak for you instead of providing research, examples or any information that could truly be of value to us as parents raising the next generation.
One of the most problematic parts of the segment included the people that spoke about their child’s television viewing habits. You interviewed a few mothers and one father. The mothers all had their children with them and were apparently on an outing with their children, either a park or a zoo. They admitted to letting their children watch television so they could take a shower, make a phone call or even have a couple minutes to themselves. The one man you interviewed spoke from an office with no kids in tow. Although you later showed a clip of him playing with his children, from your report it seems that he probably leaves the house most of the day and might possibly get to take an uninterrupted shower or go to the bathroom whenever he would like to do so.
It seems that there is so much judging of parenting going on and this was another vessel in which to do it. Although we are a highly competitive society, as parents, we should not be competing, we should be helping. We should want every parent to be the best possible caregiver, instead of feeling good because we compare ourselves to other people that we feel are doing a poor job. For example, we feel better about ourselves because we don’t let our kids what T.V., or we are better parents because we stay home with our children and others take their kids to a day care.
The future of our children greatly depends on parenting, so instead of pointing out that some parents allow their children more television time with a mental slap on the wrist, increasing the guilt we naturally feel as parents, it would be more helpful for you to run stories on effective use of time with our children. What does research say we should do instead of watching T.V.? How can we support each other as parents to raise kids in the best way possible?
I do appreciate your interest in family life and our values. I look forward to hearing ways to raise our children to happy, productive and well adjusted adults.
Thank you,
Lauren
