Half an hour a day of TV viewing is the maximum parents should allow their children, experts tell Edel Morgan
YOU KNOW your toddler watches too much TV if they've seen a cartoon or film so many times they can recite most of the dialogue and upon the 100th viewing you, as a parent, are starting to question the subtext.
My three-and-a-half-year-old is so Shrekand Tom and Jerryobsessed he often demands to see them as soon as he comes home from the crèche. He has adopted a number of catchphrases from them like "What are you doing in my swamp?" ( Shrek) and "That's my boy!" (Spike the Dog to his son in Tom and Jerry) - the latter usually directed at his little brother and accompanied by a paternal pat on his head.
It appears that parents who believe that at least their child's favourite programme is broadening their language skills and exposing them to new concepts and ideas can think again. The American Academy of Paediatrics made - what was condemned by some as a killjoy - a pronouncement that children under two years old should have no screen time whatsoever, whether it be TV, DVDs or computer games.
Both Irish experts interviewed for this article, speech and language therapist Celine Lenihan and psychologist and family therapist Owen Connolly agreed in principle with the academy's view.
Both felt, however, in the real world a ban on TV may not be practical and that half an hour a day of TV viewing is the maximum parents should allow. They say they've seen at first-hand the negative effects that excessive TV viewing can have on children, with Lenihan calling our TV obsession "an epidemic" made worse by children's TV being available around the clock on a number of channels.
There are probably few parents who aren't guilty of using the TV as a babysitter at some time or another. Connolly says he places great value in the instincts of parents to know how much TV is too much. "Every parent needs a break for 20 minutes or half an hour when they put the TV on for the child. But it's when they work outside their instincts, plonk the child in front of the TV for long periods and ignore them that it becomes negative."
Research has suggested that in a child's early years, a critical time for brain development, TV can get in the way of exploring and spending time interacting and playing with parents and others.
This interaction helps young children develop the skills they need to grow cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally. TV is being blamed on everything from speech delay, social withdrawal, obesity and even Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), although some disagree with this, including Connolly, who is convinced that ADHD is linked to a trauma either before birth or in the first three years of life.
He says one of the signs a child is watching too much TV is if they prefer to spend time with the TV rather than relating to family members or doing other activities. He believes being parked in front of the box for long periods every day can, in severe cases, lead a child to develop an insecure attachment relationship with their parents, a condition more usually associated with people who were abandoned by or separated from their parents in childhood.
Connolly, who says his studio has the only attachment development unit in Dublin, believes the most damaging aspect is the child being ignored. "They feel abandoned, and start to dismiss people and when they get older may not be good at sustaining long-term relationships. It can affect a sensitive child more because they can feel 'I'm not what they want'."
For those reeling at the implications of ever letting their child near the box, he qualifies this by saying that on balance "there are far more things than TV that can do harm to a child".
When they do watch TV he says it's best if the parent watches too, engages them throughout, talking them through it, pointing out aspects of the programme or asking questions.
Without this engagement the visual aspect of TV stimulates the occipital lobes at the back of the brain while the accompanying sounds and music stimulate the temporal lobes at the sides of the brain, but the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain governing cognitive development, remains relatively inactive.
The best programmes for pre-schoolers are apparently the ones that have an interactive element, are slower paced, and include a repetition of words and phrases, colours, shapes and numbers with an element of rhyme and song, like Balamoryor Barney. Part of the reason young children like to watch the same programme or DVD over and over is because the language is too fast paced for them to take in at once.
Lenihan, from Arc speech and language clinic, is passionate on the subject of the harmful effects of TV and says by being glued to the box children are missing out on the non-verbal components of language which are best learned through turn-taking activity games like teddies and tea sets, or doctors and nurses. "TV is a passive activity where the screen is talking, they are not learning eye contact, turn-taking, initiating communication or responding to what is being said."
She says the language in kids' TV is often too fast for young children and at too high a level. "It doesn't involve physical exploration, they need to be able to move around and feel textures and shapes and learn that way".
One of the problems she sees is delayed language. Pre-school TV addicts may be exposed to more vocabulary, "but the language doesn't relate to what they are doing every day. They learn better by experience".
In 2003 the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland estimated that Irish children watch more than 2.5 hours of TV per day, which she believes is too much and "will have a negative effect, no doubt about that". She says the best way of weaning them off the TV is coaxing them to engage in other activities as soon as they've had their half an hour quota. If they throw a tantrum her simple advice is "sometimes you just have to sit it out".