Television is bad for kids' brains?Who knew?
You mean sitting your tots down in front of an electronic box whose sole aim is to sell them toys and overpriced, unhealthy cereal -- except for the delicious and nutritious Froot Loops -- is a bad thing?
Hmmmph. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that cigarettes and undercooked chitlins are bad for us, that giving your hyperactive tyke a shot of hot toddy before bed to "take the edge off" is bad parenting and that the crunch-berries found in specially marked boxes of Cap'n Crunch aren't really berries.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has for years recommended that children younger than 2 not watch television because the tube, in essence, messes up the wiring in young minds before those minds have been set on the right channel.
That recommendation will gain even more credence now that the April issue of Pediatrics magazine has published a study confirming that tots who watch television are more likely to have difficulty paying attention in school.
One needn't be a pediatrician to know that too much television is bad for kids. If, however, you think that fact alone is going to cause parents to do the right thing and turn it off, then you yourself have been watching too much Claire Huxtable.
You can already hear harried moms complaining, "I'd never get any work done around here" or "When would I have time to watch my soaps if it wasn't for the Cartoon Network?"
Nor is it likely that toddlers are going to take these well-meant efforts to prevent them from frying their brains lying down. There'll be the requisite "Million Tots Crawl" on Washington and litigious lawyers filing class-action lawsuits on behalf of disgruntled babies.
Television, they'll say, may be bad for kids, but suddenly yanking it from them isn't good, either.
Indeed, kids should be weaned gradually off television. The Pediatrics magazine study reported that 7 percent of 3-year-olds watch no television, while 44 percent watch one to two hours daily. Twenty-one percent of 3-year-olds watch five or more hours of television a day.
Kids used to watching that much television are supposed to just drop the habit cold-turkey? And do what? Study for the bar exam?
Here's a tip: If your kids watch five or more hours of TV daily, you ought to be locked up for impersonating a parent.
The worst that could happen if you forbid little Tyesha, Brooke or Caitlin to watch as much as usual is that they'll feel left out when the gang gets together at the sandbox to discuss who got whacked on last night's episode of "The Sopranos."
As someone who has struggled with a TV addiction for years, I know the harm caused by having that television monkey -- or in Fred G. Sanford's case, the NBC peacock -- on your back. Parents will have to be vigilant. Trying to ban tots from TV-watching could lead to many problems, such as over-taxing law enforcement: Cops will find themselves responding to scores of "missing kid" alerts, only to find out that li'l Juan simply crawled next door to watch "Lilo & Stitch."
