Wednesday, August 17, 2005

TV and my kid

I have heard about studies that report that kids who watch a lot of TV are more agressive than other kids. I have to give you some anecdotal evidence to that effect.

My elder son has had no TV for the last 3 weeks for hitting my mother and me. I cannot tell you how much his behavior has improved over the last 3 weeks. He has fewer angry outburts. He doesn't hit. His attention span is longer. It's like he's a different, happier kid!

The boy is 4. He never watched more than about 2 hours a day and it was all PBS. He doesn't watch a lot of cartoons. He likes Spongebob, but he only gets to see it about once a month. After 3 weeks of none of it, he is so much more calm. I've got my sweet little boy back.

Now, both of them will get only 2 shows: Sesame Street and Zoom. That's an hour and a half att he most, assuming we get up in time for the first half hour of Sesame, which we almost never do-all we ever seem to see is Elmo's World, but that keeps the little guy happy.

I'm no scientist, or psychologist. And my little experiment is not scientific. But it seems to me that if people would stop letting their kids watch TV, there would be a lot less kids on Ritalin. As they say in Bloomfield: I'm just sayin'.

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