Family Forum / Parenting / Parenting / December 2007

BY MEGHAN COX GURDON

Here is a book that seeks to answer the question that burns guiltily in the
back of almost every modern parent's mind: Am I a bad person for sticking my
toddler in front of the TV so that I can get a little peace and quiet around
here, already?

Please note that this is a very different question from the one most parents
would actually admit to asking, that one being the rather more high-minded:
"Is screen time bad for little children?"

With "Into the Minds of Babes," author Lisa Guernsey manages in a balanced,
lucid and practical way to address both of these questions, along with other
screen-related concerns--whether about TV, or computer games, or video-game
consoles, or hand-held devices--that lurk worryingly because of the way people
live nowadays.

We are, after all, in the era of Baby Einstein, when multimedia packages are
sold to the parents of newborns with the idea that infants may get an edge on
their peers if they begin building "cognitive skills" and absorbing the
rudiments of bilingualism before they've begun eating solid food. It is an era
in which millions of small children spend all day apart from their parents in
facilities that feature screens and are staffed by "caregivers" for whom
English is not necessarily the native tongue. We live, furthermore, in a time
of rising juvenile obesity and inactivity, in a country where children seem
sometimes to have fallen wholesale into an alphabet soup of scary initials
such as ADD and ADHD, afflictions for which frenetic children's TV shows and
computer games have been partly blamed.

Ms. Guernsey is not a purist, and she's not on a campaign. She doesn't ask us
to consider what an Amish-style childhood free of screens might be like or how
children raised in such an old-fashioned environment might compare with the
legions of day-care kids goggling at "Dora the Explorer." Instead, she starts
with the sensible assumption that most American families routinely make
television and other screens available to their young children. That being the
case, well, what about it?

Relying on dozens of scientific studies, Ms. Guernsey explores the intricacies
of trying to unpick the complicated weave of what goes on inside the head of a
1- or 2 1/2-year-old child crouched before a glowing screen. Can a person yet
to speak in full sentences understand flashbacks or rapid scene changes? What
about vocabulary? Will that child be quicker to absorb new words--or, having
been overwhelmed, slower?

How researchers go about forming conclusions is neither simple nor always
satisfying, but a great deal of inquiry has been pursued in the past few
years, and more is under way even as purveyors of dubious "educational" media
are pushing electronic keypads into ever-younger plump little palms.

It turns out that some children, particularly those in single-parent or
low-income households, may benefit from some television programs ("Sesame
Street," "Blue's Clues") but not necessarily others ("Teletubbies," "Veggie
Tales"). What makes one show superior to another is almost chilling in its
simplicity, given that TV commonly serves as a substitute babysitter. "The
closer the product comes to simulating the way a good nursery school teacher
or attentive parent talks to a young child, the better," Ms. Guernsey writes.

A stunning number of families with babies and young children--39%, in one
study--keep the TV on constantly. And the effect on small children is
appalling: "Always on" television has been shown to damage their ability to
play imaginatively and to develop language, and it reduces the number of
nurturing interactions between parents and children. One researcher told Ms.
Guernsey that little children trying to learn words in the presence of
constant noise are "devastatingly impaired."

Parents may not want to be told this--they can be prickly if they think you're
criticizing their child-rearing practices. Ms. Guernsey uses her experience as
the mother of two girls to deflect any sense that she's some sort of hard-eyed
reporter-type coming to lecture weaker parents about their shortcomings. She
knows how grueling it can be to spend hours with colicky infants and restless
toddlers and to cast about for some way to distract them long enough for Mommy
to take a shower. She is clearly hoping to smuggle in a few good parenting
lessons by being nonjudgmental and more-culpable-than-thou.

It's probably a smart approach for selling a worthwhile book. But I can't help
wishing that Ms. Guernsey had been less understanding and more forceful, for
what her extensive research turns up is hardly any recommendation for putting
small children in front of screens, whether televisions, computers or
electronic teaching gadgets.

It is true that studies have found that toddlers show more recognition of
numbers and letters when they've spent time watching "Sesame Street." And
young children who watched "Barney" were judged to be more polite and socially
cooperative than their peers who watched turbulent superhero shows. That's
lovely, and good for them--though, again, we don't get comparisons with
children raised in TV-free households.

But over and over, Ms. Guernsey's findings point away from the beneficence of
the screen and toward the irreplaceable value of loving and engaged contact
between parents and children--and between children and their own imaginations.
"It is play, plain and simple play, that affords many of the most essential
intellectual and social advantages for children," Ms. Guernsey says, quoting
from a book called "Einstein Never Used Flashcards." At another point she
writes: "Video exposure is no match for the stimulation children experience in
real life. Scientists have so far come up with nothing to suggest that babies
are better off watching a baby video than, say, watching Dad fold laundry."

Ms. Guernsey is tolerant and circumspect about what she has found. I don't
have to be. If you have small children at home, please turn off that wretched
TV.

--  
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.