"Pacify" Children Under 10 with television should be illegal. Agree or disagree?
Television: Non-stop Commercial promote excessive consumerism, and unhealthy lifestyles for children. In children, helping TV: 1) to short attention spans 2) Obesity 3) Delayed Speech 4) Reduced Creativity In light of this, it not be illegal for parents to just plop their kids in front of TV? Even shows that prides itself on being for the benefit of children (ie, Sesame Street) is harmful.
I am a single mom, and if it were not for Dora and Arthur, would my child has never left me alone long enough to have a shower or preparing a meal. Or sleep. I though I would be one of the progressive tax, which does not let TV babysit my child, but by the time she was about two and a half, I had learned to program satellite to automatically change channels with the shows she liked. I would do it on Friday evening so I could sleep in Saturday morning. She slept in my bed, so tomorrow would she wake me, I'd turn on the TV and her shows would come on, and the channels will change and she was happy. Now she is seven. She is a year ahead of his class in reading and mathematics (from my work with her home), she excels in the gym and got skates in the summer, she prefers to drag in a blank sketch book of color pages, and she writes books for his friends to read. We see no TV shows that I never hooked up the cable. I have purchased DVD movies and some programs that she likes (Simpson's, Magic School Bus, Spongebob), but no network programs broadcast into our homes. At first it was a money thing but after two years, I find I do not miss it so much. We read, we play with our DS games we play, but no TV. But I do not think our early TV years damaged her in any way.
How Television Works
