More Information on TV Watching

We recently discovered a fellow blogger, Benjamin Theisen. He is a BCBA and he writes often about how ABA may be applied to every day life. We are sharing this post because of its relation to TV watching which we wrote about recently as well. We hope that you will enjoy reading Benjamin’s blog as much as we do. You will find it here if you want to read more. You may also follow him on twitter @BYOCmagazine

From USA Today: Experts tell parents secondhand TV harms child development

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Benjamin Theisen, MBA, B.C.B.A. Board Certified Behavior Analyst

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It’s in your liv­ing room.
It under­mines parent-child inter­ac­tions.
It hin­ders lan­guage devel­op­ment.
It reduces your child’s abil­ity to play and learn.
It reduces time your child will spend TRYING to play and learn.
At least 33% of fam­i­lies do it everyday…

You are the par­ent. You are in charge.

Take a stand! Turn OFF the TV!

This advice comes from the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Pedi­atrics, who recently pub­lished their first warn­ing ever about the dan­gers of sec­ond­hand TV.

“Par­ents are dis­tracted by TV the same way preschool­ers are,” says author Lisa Guernsey.

Look at your liv­ing room. Watch for the warn­ing behav­iors:
Do you leave the TV run­ning while inter­act­ing with your child?
If your child is play­ing with a toy nearby, are you check­ing the TV while cook­ing?
Are you watch­ing him play with an inter­ac­tive book while your TV plays on low-volume or mute?
Is your child col­or­ing while you rewind the DVR and read par­ent­ing blogs online?
Turn off the TV! Par­ent­ing means you multi-task enough already.

Turn OFF the TV when you inter­act with your devel­op­ing child. Read the USA Today arti­cle to know why.
Exter­nal Link — USA Today: Experts warn of harm to kids from sec­ond­hand TV viewing

For more about how you can teach your chil­dren, click this inter­nal link to BYOC Magazine’s “2 Myths about par­ents as teachers”.

For a detailed pic­ture of what to do with your child when the TV is off, click this inter­nal link to BYOC Magazine’s “Par­ents are teach­ers — Lit­tle girl vs. The shape sorter”.

What is your opin­ion on TV and par­ent­ing? Does it affect your children?

Tags: child, kids, sec­ond­hand, TV, dan­ger, devel­op­ment, par­ent­ing, advice, teaching