Baby Couch Potatoes

"Talk of the Nation" did a segment last week about the new Sesame Street Beginnings DVD. The lowdown is that unlike regular SS, aimed at preschoolers 3 and up, Beginnings is being marketed toward children 6 months to three years of age. As you can imagine, this has lots of people's panties in a bundle, especially since the American Association of Pediatrics recommends no TV for kids under the age of two, citing studies linking increases in TV watching to rises in ADD. In that vein a crapload of educational and child-advocacy institutions which sponsor and support SS's regular preschool programming are also pissed. Click here if you want to listen to the TotN experts arguing. This was also covered in online/print media here and here, among other places.

It does seem that SS is trying to jump on the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby DVD bandwagon, and that their new DVDs add legitmacy to the phenonmenon of infant TV. If you're not familiar with these soul-destroyers, Julie, over at A Little Pregnant has a fantastic blog about them and their affect on her baby Charlie (over here). Even if you are familiar with them, you at least need to watch her video parody included at the bottom of the post. Without giving too much away, let's just say that one of the segments stars a tampon suspended from a wire. And it gets wet! And expands! HAHAHHA!

But I digress...as you will see from Julie's description, babies love these videos. Their bright colors and constant motion prey on babies' natural craving for changing visual stimulation. And even though it is pretty well documented that the Baby DVD products hold absolutely no educational value for babies whatsover, there simply haven't yet been studies specifically on infant TV-watching to prove that baby TV is harmful.

Oh, and did I mention that these videos made an estimated $100 million dollars in 2004? Obviously, SS sees a lucrative market there and wants a piece of the action.

SS's defense is that parents are still plopping their tykes in front of the boob tube despite the AAP recommendation, so why not at least make the programming educational? The statistic cited on NPR was that the average American kid under 2 watches 2.5 hours (holy crap!) per day, including 'ambient" TV, which is part of the AAP prohibition.

The bottom line is that parents (including Doug and I) do allow their sub-two year olds to watch TV. I've blogged about this before. We do this for a variety of reasons. We do it because Harrison asks for it ('Ernie! Ernie!). We do it because we are sometimes tired and need a break from his constant motion. We do it so that we can buy 10 or 15 minutes to get dinner made or throw in a load of laundry. We do it in order to keep him still while getting him dressed after his bath. We do it because we want to sing or dance along with a favorite song.

After rethinking this debate on TV for the young toddler set, I still think that we use TV responsibly. We're not going to get a "Kill Your Television" bumpersticker, but we're also not going to let Harrison watch DVDs when its a beautiful day outside and dinner's made and the laundry is done and we could just as easily be in the yard or the playground chasing squirrels.

DVDs for six month olds, though? I think that's way too young.

For a much better response to the ToTn debate, read this editorial here. "We try to justify video opium by only showing our daughter "classic" old Sesame Street (like somehow TV was less harmful when we were kids)." HA!