Joanne Jacobs: Don't Kids Play With Toys Anymore

Joanne Jacobs discusses a University of Washington study that says parents who park their kids in front of baby videos are actually stunting the development of said babies.

with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. “The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew,” says Christakis.

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Last spring, Christakis and his colleagues found that by three months, 40% of babies are regular viewers of DVDs, videos or television; by the time they are two years old, almost 90% are spending two to three hours each day in front of a screen. Three studies have shown that watching television, even if it includes educational programming such as Sesame Street, delays language development.

Jacobs noted that her daughter didn't watch TV nor spend every waking moment with mom.

My daughters watch about 2 hours of TV a day, usually Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in the morning and Disney Channel in the evening. While the TV may be on at other times during the day, usually for things like the Weather Channel or the news (not so much since "if it bleeds, it leads" is still a journalistic mantra), they probably are not engrossed in it. Often times we use the cable's digital music channels to provide music in the house. Even when their shows are on, there is often a great deal of playing going on.

My oldest daughter started talking around 20 months or so and my youngest daughter (who is 22 months old) has been chattering away for solid six or seven months. I see no evidence that their TV habits have impacted their language development at all. In fact, I would suspect it has enhanced their vocabulary. As for their attention span, one need only watch the elaborate and lenghty "games," drama/dance scenarios and role-playing my daughters undertake (with hour-long or more scenarios involving dozens of characters, dolls, animals and rather intricate story lines) to know that their attention span is in no way damaged by TV or videos.

My guess is that this study, like all such studies, has some methodology flaws. Add to that the smart marketing of the DVD companies and the mixed messages about what makes a baby "smart" and you have a recipe for parents to do things just begging for such studies. Joanne Jacobs said her daughter played with her toys a lot, so do mine and there is nothing wrong with their development. In reality, my bet is that TV in moderation (and appropriate) is probably a good thing--as are books, music, physical play, games, toys, pets, and so on and so on.