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I just spent four weeks on a pediatric neurology clerkship in medical school, and my wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. Throw away your TV. Just do it

I just spent four weeks on a pediatric neurology clerkship in medical school, and my wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. Throw away your TV. Just do it. After Katrina, when we evacuated to my parents' house, they'd just moved in themselves, the day before. We agreed to not hook up cable. My kids calmed down noticeably. No, remarkably. We watch, maybe, a movie or two a week. The DVD player broke, so they only watch those movies on a computer anyway. The TV hasn't been turned on in weeks. I now own a $5000 Ethan Allen box to hide a $500 TV box that I don't use. Just throw the boob tube away. What do you do with a livingroom that has no TV? Feng shui. My wife has started advising parents of kids with ADHD to get rid of their TVs. They're scared at first, but they do it. And in a few days or weeks they love her for it. The pediatric neurologists I was with last month think ADHD probably isn't even a legit diagnosis (psychiatric diagnoses are voted on). They very frankly told me they think it's mainly a combination of TV and bad parenting, which is on the rise thanks to TV and entirely too many double-income homes. And if you're questioning their politics, these folks are insanely smart and educated, and probably more liberal than Noam Chomsky, and I know at least one that raised four kids herself. In case you missed it: throw away the TV. All of them. For specific readings, go to PubMed's Entrez site and look up the author "Christakis DA". He's prolific, but his biggest newsmakers are some rather large studies showing dose-dependent correlations between TV and obesity, attention deficit, violence at school, and I think there was something else.

curi 19y ago
The arguments against TVs are very similar to the older arguments made against letting children have books.
- Olgaar 19y ago
  I'm not one to tell anyone how to raise their children (see arguements below about spanking, yikes). This is just my experience... take it or leave it YMMV. My son is only two, and we find that if we let him watch too much TV his behavior takes a dive... more tantrums, less respect/listening to me and mom. As an experiment, we unplugged the TV for several days and the results were immediate and dramatic. Since then, we try to limit his TV time even more so than before. The danger is that he enjoys it, and us parents enjoy the opportunity to take care of other projects around the house without interruption. So if we find the family slipping into TV reliance, we pull the plug for a couple days. Sometimes he's upset at first when he realizes it doesn't work, but he's over it in SECONDS and moves on to something else. I'm not going to bother guessing why this is the case, but our experience is very clear to us. My personal philosophy is all things in moderation. So if it makes him happy to watch the Wiggles or some old-school Fraggle Rock on DVD, he gets to. But it's the responsiblity of me and mom to keep it reasonable and keep the house a happy place for everyone.
  - curi 19y ago
    My philosophy is more like "all things thoughtfully". We should care about why TV seems to cause various effects, and what effects unplugging it may have. For example, suppose a child wants to read a good book, you take it away, and he "gets over it in seconds". Does that mean all is right with the world? No. Whether or not he remains upset about the book, he's still missing out on a wonderful book that could have benefitted him. One also ought to think about how to correct errors. For example, pulling the plug on the TV avoids any input from someone who might know something you don't (like, your child might know more about how important it is to him to see a particular show). Wouldn't it be better to reach an agreement? The more right you are, the easier that will be, won't it? But if you have made a mistake one time, then getting others to agree will be harder, so you get an opportunity to avoid that error.
    - Olgaar 19y ago
      I think I agree with you on most counts. Although I'm a little confused by your proposal about the importance of reaching a consensus with the child. Are you refering to older children? As I'm sure you're aware, a child under 2-3 (depending on the child) doesn't have the vocabulary to reach a complex agreement with anyone.
      - curi 19y ago
        The less a child knows, the easier it is to reach a (simple) agreement. Objecting requires having ideas, not ignorance. I don't think there's usually any reason for a very young child to disagree with his parent frequently since he generally won't have any better ideas than they do. But there are sometimes cases of serious disagreement and it's important not to gloss those over.
        niels_olson 19y ago
        The first sentence is an unsubstantiated assumption and, as a parent, I can tell you it's wrong. The less a child knows, the less context they have, so the less room you have to negotiate an agreement. Plus, their knowledge level is intimately tied to their memory span, their language, their capacity to understand their own emotions, and all the things you and I still grapple with, but at least we have more context and language. And even then, if you subscribe to the ideas of George Lakoff, our life experience may be sufficiently divergent that we still can't arrive at an agreement. I think that divergence is what led you to make the original statement, that the less you know the easier it is to reach a simple agreement. It's tempting to follow that one variable, divergence of life experience, back to a singularity, but that neglects the many other variables at play in real life.
- niels_olson 19y ago
  The video equivalent of a book is any imaging screen. Cathode ray tube, LCD, whatever. That's not inherently bad. The social construct of mass one-way transmission coming in through an imaging screen and paid for with advertising, which is ultimately designed to modify your child's thinking, is not healthy in the context of the standard biopsychosocial model of disease. We didn't evolve to handle professional psychological manipulation by the age of two. If we had, then it would be healthy. But we didn't. So it's unhealthy.

curi 19y ago

The arguments against TVs are very similar to the older arguments made against letting children have books.

Olgaar 19y ago
I'm not one to tell anyone how to raise their children (see arguements below about spanking, yikes). This is just my experience... take it or leave it YMMV. My son is only two, and we find that if we let him watch too much TV his behavior takes a dive... more tantrums, less respect/listening to me and mom. As an experiment, we unplugged the TV for several days and the results were immediate and dramatic. Since then, we try to limit his TV time even more so than before. The danger is that he enjoys it, and us parents enjoy the opportunity to take care of other projects around the house without interruption. So if we find the family slipping into TV reliance, we pull the plug for a couple days. Sometimes he's upset at first when he realizes it doesn't work, but he's over it in SECONDS and moves on to something else. I'm not going to bother guessing why this is the case, but our experience is very clear to us. My personal philosophy is all things in moderation. So if it makes him happy to watch the Wiggles or some old-school Fraggle Rock on DVD, he gets to. But it's the responsiblity of me and mom to keep it reasonable and keep the house a happy place for everyone.
- curi 19y ago
  My philosophy is more like "all things thoughtfully". We should care about why TV seems to cause various effects, and what effects unplugging it may have. For example, suppose a child wants to read a good book, you take it away, and he "gets over it in seconds". Does that mean all is right with the world? No. Whether or not he remains upset about the book, he's still missing out on a wonderful book that could have benefitted him. One also ought to think about how to correct errors. For example, pulling the plug on the TV avoids any input from someone who might know something you don't (like, your child might know more about how important it is to him to see a particular show). Wouldn't it be better to reach an agreement? The more right you are, the easier that will be, won't it? But if you have made a mistake one time, then getting others to agree will be harder, so you get an opportunity to avoid that error.
  - Olgaar 19y ago
    I think I agree with you on most counts. Although I'm a little confused by your proposal about the importance of reaching a consensus with the child. Are you refering to older children? As I'm sure you're aware, a child under 2-3 (depending on the child) doesn't have the vocabulary to reach a complex agreement with anyone.
    - curi 19y ago
      The less a child knows, the easier it is to reach a (simple) agreement. Objecting requires having ideas, not ignorance. I don't think there's usually any reason for a very young child to disagree with his parent frequently since he generally won't have any better ideas than they do. But there are sometimes cases of serious disagreement and it's important not to gloss those over.
      - niels_olson 19y ago
        The first sentence is an unsubstantiated assumption and, as a parent, I can tell you it's wrong. The less a child knows, the less context they have, so the less room you have to negotiate an agreement. Plus, their knowledge level is intimately tied to their memory span, their language, their capacity to understand their own emotions, and all the things you and I still grapple with, but at least we have more context and language. And even then, if you subscribe to the ideas of George Lakoff, our life experience may be sufficiently divergent that we still can't arrive at an agreement. I think that divergence is what led you to make the original statement, that the less you know the easier it is to reach a simple agreement. It's tempting to follow that one variable, divergence of life experience, back to a singularity, but that neglects the many other variables at play in real life.
niels_olson 19y ago
The video equivalent of a book is any imaging screen. Cathode ray tube, LCD, whatever. That's not inherently bad. The social construct of mass one-way transmission coming in through an imaging screen and paid for with advertising, which is ultimately designed to modify your child's thinking, is not healthy in the context of the standard biopsychosocial model of disease. We didn't evolve to handle professional psychological manipulation by the age of two. If we had, then it would be healthy. But we didn't. So it's unhealthy.