TV Causes Learning Lag in Infants
: )
I made a decision to not get one when we were first on our own and I think it has made a marked difference in my childrens language compared with their piers, but then I may be suffering from that thing where you see your own children as prodigious and all others as subnormal and underdeveloped : )
On a serious not though, my children never ask for stuff, not branded stuff anyway, they have no desire to eat from that place where they sell meat in a bread bun thing with some limp lettuce, they are not harping on about Barbie or Ben Ten or Spiderman or what ever, maybe it will change as they grow into their teens but at the moment they are keen to shop with me in charity shops and get all excited when they find something they like, and they are quite understanding when I explain that they will just have to wait until someone donates stuff, if there was something for one and not the other...
But then (ah sigh) that's just probably because I have been blessed and they are perfect :D :D
That's interesting Bubblegum that your kids haven't been exposed to the vagaries of TV adverts. How well I remember saying to mine "yes I know Santa brings eight enormous gifts to your friend X and you get two small ones but that is because I can't afford to send Santa much money". :? I know fine well that mine watched far too much TV.
There was a 20th century psychologist called Sandra Bem, who wanted to bring her children (a boy and a girl) up to have no gender pre-conceptions, so she kept them away from as many influences as possible, including TV. Eventually they fell prey to these influences but not until Bem had demonstrated how different her kids were for having avoided these in the early years. Sorry, I digress........ :oops:
However much money we may have or not have, it does not seem to do kids any good to have everything on a plate, and I was the same as you, Sparkling, even when I had a certain amount of money.
Louise :)
Hay! I started off trying to not impose any gender specific roles on my two, but it all went horribly wrong and now my son wants to wear dresses all the time and his favourite colour is pink.. just the other day we were walking along the beach and he found this pink cardigan that someone must have just dropped and by some one I mean old lady that shopped in Marks, one of those sort of pastel pink really thin things just like grandma wears..
Anyway, he now insists on wearing it everywhere, it hangs off him, but he seems to think he looks cool and who am I to spoil his fun.
On his fifth birthday all he wanted was a princess dress and a sword, here is a picture of him in that dress with that sword : )
Sandra Bem sounds really interesting, I'm going to find out more. I know that ultimately it's unavoidable I just really want to keep them away from everything I see as bad with the world, commercialism and greed and the culture of want and more and bigger and better, work, spend.. and all that.
I think that I must try for as long as possible to keep them away from it, until their minds have been able to form without being told by adverts what to do and be and buy.
I do lots of shopping on ebay too sparklinglime : ) it's good isn't it! I found some nice Indian clothes for my kids.. and I just got a guitar ostensibly for my kids so they might pick it up and find it interesting, but in actual fact I suspect I'm having some sort of delayed mid life crisis and now wish to relive my lost youth or something : )
thanx.
Thanx.
Well he looks gorgeous.
My youngest's favourite colour was pink for years, and then the others started to tell him it was for girls - so he started to say his favourite colour was knip... Took me ages to realise it was pink backwards! :roll:
My daughter went on so much that he stopped liking pink when he was about 8. I thought it was so sad.
I wouldn't let my lot have guns or knives. So they used to make them out of lego!!!! :lol: And there was me trying to explain about peace and how sad war is.
With adverts, I remember watching a psychologist, I assume, who said that if you point out to children that the toys don't actually do what they say in the adverts that you can talk a child out of wanting them. It did seem to work - but them my lot have always been close. Where I lived was pretty isolated, so they only had each other to play with most of the time (although I had a people carrier - I worked full-time then) unless I brought their friends round. We could go to a party and they would gradually work their way back to each other so the four end up together - and that still seems to happen (well it did at the last party we went to back in 2005, I think!
After a recent incident with my son with special needs (someone impersonating a police officer had a go at him), who was too scared to go and see his friend just up the road, the older two went with him and stayed with him. I thought that was lovely. No prompting from me.
I like it when mine walk down the road holding hands : ) and like you say when they do nice things for each other. I was telling my son off once and he said I was being horrible to him, which I denied, only to hear my daughter pipe up, yes you are daddy..
The buggers with their unified front.
latter.
Ahh I love to hear of sibling kinship, I used to love listening in to my daughter and her friends, when they were small, discussing all sorts of bizarre things. Its not so interesting now they are teenagers!
We didn't have a telly when my daughter was small, I just couldn't afford it and I actually quite liked it, but then her estranged dad decided to buy her for her 4th birthday a TV and video for her bedroom. (He didn't know that we didn't have one at all). I told her she wasn't allowed it in her bedroom, she was too young and we ended up watching a lot of videos from charity shops and then I got a TV licence. Its funny because I tried the whole gender equality thing. As I was a tomboy I really didn't want my girl to be all girly, I used to tell her that The Spice Girls were irresponsible and bad role models for girls and that Barbie represents an imaginary grown up woman, all busty with a tiny waist and that rag dolls were much better toys, but once again my ex in laws changed all that by buying her Barbies galore with hundreds of accessories. And clothes with the spice girls on, yeeuurgh!
And my last rant today, talking of television, I always used to put her to bed by 7.30 so I could watch Eastenders (of which I did become an addict!) I used to say to her it wasn't appropriate for a 6,7,8,9,10 year old to watch, but it wasn't until recently I learned that she used to watch the omnibus on Sundays at the ex in laws, even though they and she knew I didn't approve, double yeeuurgh!!
My lot were told they couldn't have a tele in their bedroom until they were 12.
However my three boys share the main bedroom here, so the youngest has got away with it!
My 13 year old though is mad on documentaries, and as it leads to a quiet life :D we have come to terms with the fact that we have to like documentaries too!! Well, we do anyway really! I'm really glad that really they watch very little children's tele.
My 13 year old's favourite programme is air craft investigations, which really is rather sick with things like "there are 123 people on this aircraft, and what they don't know is that they won't survive this flight" (sorry, I realise this is very tasteless with the aircrash that has just happened). My son wants to be a pilot :o After I've watched half a programme, you still won't get me on an aeroplane. :lol:
Sparkling if you did go on a plane they would probably be showing one of those documentaries on the TV screen. I will never forget 5 years ago, a dear friend was in A and E after a car crash, I went to take him some stuff and he was in a wheelchair covered in blood and glass still waiting to be seen. What was showing on the hospital Tv screen? An episode of "Messiah" where every patient in hospital was being murdered :lol: :lol: :lol:
Sparkling if you did go on a plane they would probably be showing one of those documentaries on the TV screen. I will never forget 5 years ago, a dear friend was in A and E after a car crash, I went to take him some stuff and he was in a wheelchair covered in blood and glass still waiting to be seen. What was showing on the hospital Tv screen? An episode of "Messiah" where every patient in hospital was being murdered :lol: :lol: :lol:
I had a major smash with my dad back in 1980. After being stitched up we waited with my dad on a side ward as he had dislocated his hip and was waiting for that to be sorted there was a documentary about car smashes on the tele, showing the injuries and all the statistics country wide of the number of deaths. :lol:
Honestly, no-one would would believe you if you wrote it in a book. I suppose the alternative is to play terrible music like they do in doctor's surgeries, only so you can't hear what interesting illness the patient before you is discussing....DANG :shock:
HI,
With me my conversations, generally, with parents that I know anyway, seem to go along the lines of, somewhere, of me trying to explain how I can manage to pacify my kids when I don't have a TV!?... and I have known and do know people who turn their TV on first thing in the morning and put their newborn child in a bouncer in front of that TV thus setting a president. Each to their own but I think that is wrong, TV is passive entertainment, while watching it you are very much open to suggestion and your mind is switched down a gear or two. Children should be engaged in interactive entertainment with real life people who happen to be standing in front of them, they should be stimulated through touch and smell and sight in the real world.
I don't have a TV in my house and my kids don't generally watch it (TV), but! when they do, like when I go to someones house for example and that person has one on, they sit transfixed in a state of dream like hypnosis, very scarily, and after are all to eager to tell me about all the wonderful shiny things that they want that they have seen.
I've managed to fight it off so far, and I feel good! My son is six, very nearly seven and I'm kind of proud that when I ask him what he wants for his birthday he doesn't mention brand names of characters from TV or films. My daughter is five in a week and all she wants for her birthday is a guitar and Lemon Polenta cake, so.. Victory there as far as I'm concerned. The longer I can hold it off and allow them to develop independently of popular culture the better. I expect over the next few years they will start to demand a TV as that is what their friends have but I think by then, if not by now even, they have already developed the foundations of, I hope at least, individual strong personalities, I hope so anyway, and I hope they have developed the skills to stand up to the incessant bombardment of greed and buy, buy, buy and me, me, me that popular culture preaches.
I hope, I hope, I hope at least
: )
I'm so glad mine aren't the only perfect ones... 8-)
When I was married, with both of us working me used to have a pretty good income, and I spoilt my children. They had nice clothes - but then so did their friends, it wasn't a 'keeping up with the jones' thing (my maiden name!! lol ) it was just the way I shopped!
Most of our shopping is done on ebay. Eldest loves his adidas polo shirts, but understands I can't buy new. We've had some really good bargain. My friend is the manageress of a charity shop in town, and phones me if anything she thinks the children will like comes in (not favouritism, as it still goes on the rail, I just need to be quick!).
We do have a tele - well actually in the kitchen too, but its not on all the time. We listen to loads of music, but often sit in silence.
I do think its how children are raised, as I've never given in to my lot (even when I was married), and if they kicked up a fuss we walked out the shop - so they didn't kick up a fuss.
As I said to someone the other day when we were watching a child that was being bribed by a lolly to stop having a tantrum, it's lucky I'm perfect... ;)
I think living where I do, we have so many options with going out - less now they do things with their friends - but we were always having picnics on the beach or in the mountains or at RAF Valley (my son with special needs has phases of loving aircraft). All stuff that takes them away from the tele.
Having said that, other than my youngest, they all had speech therapy! The other three had glue ear...