T.V.

How are we spending our summer months? A quick search on Google supplies me with a list of (no kidding) 120 million citings of the phrase "watching TV". Many cites that I looked at were sounding the alarm of the dangers of TV; child hood obesity, visual lock, introduction to violenct behavior, phsycological trick of advertising to children and more.

I am not an advocate of ZERO TV, my own children loved the characters they met watching The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, the Sesame Street Gang and lots of others. But as my friend Molly puts it "I have never seen anything so compelling be so dulling at the same time. For a child's brain, which is developing at high speed, watching television is like being stuck in a traffic jam". While watching television only 2 learning senses are at play - here is a list of what is not working:

• Looking left to right, strengthening reading skills
• Practicing motor skills, such as running, jumping or using sicssors
• Practicing eye-hand coordination
• Using more than 2 senses
• Asking questions
• Exploring
• Exercising innovation and motivation
• Solving problems
• Thinking analytically
• Practicing communication skills
• Being either creative or constructive.
  

So, it is worth being mindful of how much time we spend in front of the tube. Among the alarming articles, I ran across this more reasonable one, with some good information. Click HERE to read more about it. Or keep surfing, there is probably a 1,000,000 hours of reading about TV out there on your computer screen. How ironic.