Reply to My toddler gets 1-2 hours of tv per night

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To the PPs saying they turned out fine despite watching TV as a kid, that's irrelevant to what the research argues.

At birth, the brain already has about all of the neurons it will ever have. It doubles in size in the first year, and by age three it has reached 80 percent of its adult volume.

So if you were watching hours of TV when you were 5, that's very different than a 2 year old watch hours of TV.  Also, the prevalence and content on TV as a whole isn't comparable to decades ago.

And to the PPs saying their kids learn from TV.  Learning to repeat what is heard is very different than the critical, imaginative thinking that occurs during play.

Screen time is one part of parenting, so if it works for you family, that's fine.  But just do your own research and be aware of the arguments against it.  It's not that your kids won't turn out okay, [b]it's that you're not optimizing this small window of brain development.[/b]  And excessive amounts can lead to things like attention issues down the road.[/quote]

Here's the thing: there is always *something* that is not being optimized for our children.  There's always a trade-off.  Some parents drive themselves bananas enriching their children during this supposedly critical window of brain development; others play the long game and realize they'll have to attend to their teenagers, too, so they might as well pace themselves.  Most of the parents I know who do as you argue burn out and/or push their kids well past what's optimal for development.  I mean, perfectionism isn't healthy, either, right?  If Daniel Tiger helps a parent get a reasonably healthy dinner on the table without losing their freaking mind, that's not a bad thing.

(Also, brain development and the relationships between something like screen time and attention problems are way, way more complex than you're describing them to be.)[/quote]

I didn't argue for no screen time.  I argued for everyone to do their own research and make the best decision for their family based on that, not on a stranger's self-assessment of having turned out okay.  There are a lot of variables (type of show, child's age, amount of time).  And this is only one variable in raising your kid, so everyone needs to look at the full picture of their family and make decisions based on that.

We aren't a no screen family, but we aren't an every day family either.  I think there's a balance and the answer is somewhere between the extremes, as with almost everything.[/quote]

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