What to Expect the Toddler Years (60 page)

Give him plenty of opportunity to walk hanging on to one or both of your hands.

Encourage cruising on furniture (but make sure whatever he holds onto for support is sturdy).

Applaud his efforts at cruising, standing alone, and walking but don’t belittle
him for
not
cruising, standing alone, or walking.

Give him a small, safe toy to hold when he is standing alone or holding your hand; this may distract him enough so that he takes a step without realizing it. Or offer him a favorite toy from a short distance; encourage him to take a step to reach it. A push toy that provides security and stability while he inches forward can also make walking less frightening for him.

If he’s been using a walker, get rid of it. A walker is not only dangerous, but it can make it more difficult for a child to walk solo, because it encourages a different walking pattern than that required for walking independently.

You don’t have to look far these days to stumble across startling statistics about children and television; you’ll find them in newspapers, magazines, and on television itself. They tell us that children between the ages of two and five watch an average of more than twenty-five hours of television a week—with some staring at the tube for five or more hours a day. That by high school graduation the average American child will have spent a cumulative 15,000 hours (almost two solid years, night and day) in front of a television—a full 4,000 more hours than he or she will have spent in classrooms. And that television has been linked to all of the following among our children:

The couch potato syndrome.
Kids don’t just look like they’re vegetating while they’re watching TV, they really
are
. They actually enter a trance-like state, with their metabolic rate (the rate at which the body burns calories) dropping as much as 16% below what it is in a normal resting state (when they are just sitting and doing nothing) and even farther below what it is when they are active.

Inadequate physical, intellectual, social activity.
When the television is on, children aren’t generally running around, playing with other kids, looking at books or listening to stories, playing dress-up or make-believe, drawing or painting, or exercising their minds and bodies in any other way. Excessive viewing prevents young children from developing skills that are vital to long-term happiness. Chronic TV viewers learn to depend on television for stimulation and satisfaction.

Obesity.
Studies show that TV is one reason why obesity among children has risen 50% in the last couple of decades. The explanation for this is simple: too many calories. TV addicts consume more calories (they tend to snack while viewing, and tempted by advertising, tend to snack on the wrong kinds of foods). And they burn fewer calories (because they exercise less and have a slower metabolic rate during TV watching).

Higher cholesterol levels.
Not only does a heavy diet of TV tend to make young viewers heavier, it also tends to raise their cholesterol level. Researchers suggest that this is due to a combination of factors, including inactivity and a heart-unhealthy
diet inspired by TV commercials and junk food snacked on during TV viewing. It’s even been suggested that parents who fail to limit TV viewing may be the same parents who also fail to limit fat in the family diet and to take other steps to control cholesterol.

An increase in aggressive behavior.
Though some continue to dispute it, mounting evidence supports what many parents have long suspected: Watching violence on TV fosters aggressive behavior in children. At the very least, it dulls sensitivity toward violence, and allows young viewers to take it for granted rather than being worried about it. (Why not, when the character splattered across the screen in one episode always snaps right back in the next?)

Increased fear.
Young children find it difficult, or even impossible, to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. They find fantasy as frightening as reality because they tend to take all that they see and hear literally; what they see on TV is, for them, as real as what happens in their living room or playground. Even if they don’t seem frightened while watching a scary show, they may later experience nightmares related to it.

As children begin to differentiate between fact and fiction sometime during the preschool years (though they aren’t able to make the distinction fully until much later), news shows (with reports on murders, fires, natural disasters, crashes, and so on) become particularly threatening. Young children tend to picture what they see on television happening to themselves or those they love.

Questionable values.
A few children’s shows make a very commendable effort to teach positive values, such as tolerance, sharing, kindness, and honesty. Many programs, however, transmit negative values, such as it’s okay to use violence or to lie to get what you want, or the acquisition of “things” is what makes you important or popular.

Less effective coping skills.
A toddler is bored, cranky, upset, has a problem? For many parents, the solution is simple: Click on the TV. Experts predict that children whose parents use television in this way may grow up unable to deal with the normal ebbs and flows of life; rather than trying to work out problems or figure a way out of boredom, they may gravitate toward easy fixes, even develop self-destructive habits. You don’t have to face reality when
Pinocchio
is on.

Lagging intellectual and social development.
Not surprisingly, heavy TV viewers tend to score lower on reading tests, and on average, do less well in school than light viewers. There are probably a host of reasons, including: less time (and less inclination) to read and study; overblown expectations (the high-tech, special-effects style of TV learning turns children into passive learners who are bored or unable to concentrate when learning in school is not as exciting and fast-paced as it is on TV). Excessive television viewing in the toddler years can prevent a child from developing a close relationship with books, a relationship crucial to continuing intellectual growth.

Less imagination and creativity.
Reading provides the paint and the brush but makes your mind do the drawing, visualizing scenes, imagining action, and so on. Television, on the other hand, paints the whole picture and leaves nothing to the imagination. With rare exceptions, TV shows don’t challenge children to come up with new ideas and don’t encourage creativity.

Weak independent play skills.
Children who watch a lot of TV often can’t entertain themselves and certainly aren’t
motivated to do so. Spoiled by the ample stimulation of TV, heavy viewers don’t want to put effort into free play that requires thought and imagination.

Weaker family and social ties.
Families that watch TV day in and day out may gradually drift apart. With everyone in a TV trance so much of the time, there is often little interaction, little sharing of ideas, feelings, values.

Have these eye-opening facts prompted us to close our children’s eyes to television? For the most part, no—and for a lot of reasons:
Educational value.
TV does have its positive side. When used to advantage, it can be a valuable educational tool, though it rarely reaches its full potential in this role.
Peer pressure.
Even among toddlers, such characters as Big Bird, Dora, and Little Bear are part of everyday life, and the child who is unfamiliar with them can feel left out.
Convenience.
Busy parents often turn to an electronic “sitter” to occupy their children while they make dinner or open the day’s mail or do the laundry. When a favorite film is on, they don’t have to make any effort to cheer their children up, find them a project, listen to their problems.
Peace.
There’s no surer way of assuring tranquillity in a household (assuming everyone agrees to watch the same program) than lining your offspring up in front of a television set. For parents of toddlers, who desperately crave a tranquil moment (if only now and then), the TV option is almost irresistible: click on the TV, click off a high-strung toddler.

Despite its faults, TV does offer access to a wonderland of experiences—sights, sounds, and people—that a child can find nowhere else. It can take children to the far corners of the world or even the universe, expose them to the past and the future, the everyday and the exotic, the arts and the sciences. These Ten Commandments will help your family derive the most benefits from this medium with the least risk:

1. Establish sensible limits now.
If you wait until your child is in school to enact and enforce such limits, the task will be much more difficult. What limits make sense? Before two years of age, it’s best if a toddler skips TV all together. After this, half an hour a day is plenty. Choose the shows for your toddler until he or she is old enough to participate. At that point, you can offer choices: “Do you want to watch
Blue’s Clues
or
Sesame Street
today?” As she gets older, you might consider a little more TV, especially on very rainy or bitter cold days. But allowing hours of TV for toddlers, who should be doing rather than watching, is not a good idea.