Viewing TV at the Center

08/03/2010

Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.
Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner

As concerns over the negative effects of the time children spend watching television mount, a new study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that children in child care centers and family child care homes may perpetuate, not discourage, television watching. In the study, child care centers in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington were surveyed about the amount of time children in these programs watched television.

The results of the study, as reported in Preschool Matters (May 2010), indicated that in as many as 70 percent of family child care homes and 36 percent of child care centers children watched television daily. In programs where the television was used, infants and toddlers in family child care homes spent two to three hours a day watching television and about one and a half hours in centers.

The article went on to review recent findings about watching television:

Infant and toddler television exposure has been associated with obesity and language delay.
Long-term studies have shown that early television viewing habits predict later television viewing behavior.
Television viewing displaces a key ingredient in children's development — play.

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