Book Report: The Plug-In Drug.

I think this might be a good time to revisit our decision to keep Zoe TV-free as we are finding ourselves suddenly warming to the idea. (Funny how a crappy first trimester can do that!)

First a little history: we have wrestled with whether to allow Zoe to watch TV since she was about 4 months old. At that time, I noticed that whenever I was nursing her in front of the TV, she would unlatch (causing geysers of milk to drown nearby cities) and stare glassy-eyed at the TV until I did something to block her view. So we decided to keep the TV off when she was awake, though I still watched during many naps and in the evenings. I quickly figured out that some of my less-than-complete bliss at being a stay-at-home mom was related to the way I felt after spending too many hours prostrate before the tube watching "Jon and Kate Plus 8"/"Rock of Love"/"Made"/"What Not to Wear" and whatever the hell came on after because OH GOD I CANNOT SEEM TO TURN IT OFF. When Zoe was an infant, TV kept me company, made me a feel a little less alone and gave structure to my strangely formless days.

It also made me feel pretty crappy. So after initially focusing on keeping the TV off when Zoe was awake, I started to seriously limit my TV intake in general. CG too. If there is something specific we like ("The Office", "The Daily Show", "Entourage", "Weeds"), we TiVo it and if the time comes that we really want to watch it, we can, without commercials, on our own time. Today, this means that we don't watch that much TV, usually an hour or so a couple times a week. Which is quite lovely. (Though lately, with this ever present nausea, I've been watching way too much again. So I'm hereby resolving to go back to the No TV During The Day rule. Her naps can be my naps and I trust I will manage to survive without seeing my 1,000th "A Baby Story".

We don't plan on keeping TV from Zoe forever; after all, we await the blessed time when she can wake up early on a Saturday, take herself into the living room and watch cartoons while CG and I sleep in. But we decided to go with the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation and wait till she was at least two and then decide.

She is now two and a half. Now what?

Last spring, after I noticed a tattered billion-year-old copy of "The Plug-In Drug" by Marie Winn at my parenting education class, I went home and ordered myself a copy of the "updated" book. (Updated to include references to VCRs but not DVDs. Winn mentions with TERROR one "new" minivan that now comes with a built-in VCR. OOOOOoooo. Me thinks it's time for her to update again.)

The book is straightforward and decently written. No poetry here, just get-the-point-across prose. (Hmm perhaps that should be my new blog tagline...) However, Winn clearly has an agenda (can you guess what it is from the title?!) and relies on waayyyy too many anecdotes to support her arguments. (I know anecdotes are supposed to be helpful, so many parenting books include them, and honestly, they mostly annoy the F out of me. I prefer statistics and an N of 1 does NOTHING for me, people.)

And just what are her arguments, you ask? (Her points are summarized in bold, my comments follow.)

1.The real issue with TV is not the content (many parents counter any argument against TV with "But it's educational! He's learning Spanish/spelling/math!"). The problem is that time spent watching TV is time NOT spent doing something open-ended, using your child's imagination. TV captures the imagination, it does not stimulate it. This is especially problematic in young childhood as their developing mind should be busy making sense of the world and exploring, at their own pace, based on their own interest. TV is a passive experience that replaces play in which the child is the active leader. Young children so often have things done TO them and rarely get the chance to lead their own lives. Only open ended play does that. TV does not.

I find this argument persuasive. Zoe often plays independently, in her own world, talking to herself and her dollies and her shoes (! Should I be worried about that one?). I wouldn't want to disrupt, limit or impinge on her having that open-ended time. I hear the educational argument all the time from parents who don't understand why we don't show Zoe TV and I'm not terribly persuaded by it because, as Winn points out, EARLY childhood is not about acquiring rote skills through prescription (there's enough time for that later in school) but about acquiring social skills, independent play skills and imagination, all of which can be limited or hampered by TV watching.

2. The slippery slope issue: TV habits often start small (a half hour here, a half hour there), but as the child gets older TV replaces more and more of the open ended exploring that is the cornerstone of childhood development. It becomes more and more of a draw and harder and harder to limit. A daily battle over how much TV is allowed is common in many households.

(I just saved you by not including the 8,000 anecdotes she uses to illustrate this point.) I know myself and TV and fear my own slippery slope tendencies with it. And we still see Zoe completely zone out whenever she does see TV (at restaurants or friends' houses) so it's easy to imagine that it would be a big draw for her. I fear I would resort to it more and more and more. Once that gate is open, I know it would be hard to keep limits.

We are wrestling with this even more, just in the last few days, because somehow we got into the habit of watching some short videos of dance recitals on YouTube. I'm not sure how it started but now Zoe is a bit obsessed and insists on seeing the "Mary had a little lamb dancers!" ALL DAY LONG. We've got to put a stop to it, if only to keep my brain from rotting. I feel like it's just semantics at this point that we're keeping "TV" from her when she's watching videos on the computer. They are short and I'm right there with her but still, it's screen time all the same.

3. It allows us as parents to get a little lazy when faced with a task we need to do and a toddler who wants our attention. It becomes too easy to plunk your child down in front of the TV while you are cooking dinner rather than finding ways to include them in the process or find a parallel play activity that they can do while you work. It may be an easy short term solution that becomes an entrenched habit.

I was first really REALLY was tempted to use TV when Zoe started being clingy RIGHT at dinner-making time. For a month or two, it was IMPOSSIBLE to cook anything without her screaming, whining body attached to my leg/hip/neck. Soon enough, I figured out things that she could do while I cooked and now she mostly plays independently in the kitchen with me while I cook or I involve her in cooking (okay, right NOW, I'm not really "cooking" at all but the warming up of Trader Joe's food and the doing of dishes from the three previous meals so that we have a clear table and some dishes to eat with still has to get done somehow!). I fear that if I had used TV then, I would never have tried to get her back into the kitchen with me. Dinner making time would just be TV time and that would be the end of it.

4. It doesn't allow for the imagination that comes with "boredom". Finding something to do when you are in unstructured time is a skill. As the TV generation ages we find many adults who are unable to do this. These are the people who automatically turn on the TV on vacation, the ones who have it on all weekend long without really watching anything, the ones who spent the whole evening after work endlessly channel surfing to see if "somethings on". Boredom for kids inspires creativity. Those who learn how to deal with boredom and entertain themselves will not be as likely to yell "Mom! I'm booooreeeddd!"when they're older as they will not be counting on external stimulation all the time.

I have friends and family who must always have the TV on and I honestly find it a strange and sad thing. What about silence? What about a little space to hear the voice of your own thoughts? What happens if a child is not given the opportunity to live and play without external stimulation all the time? What if even a little of that external stimulation becomes so treasured that it surpasses all other play in value to the child?

5. Children are different from adults. Adults can use TV to unwind from stressful days, to relax while being effortlessly entertained. Children benefit from other ways of unwinding. TV time, instead of relaxing children, often leaves them crankier than before, which, she argues, is most likely a result of the different kind of consciousness that occurs in young children watching TV. It is akin to post-sleep crankiness where the brain is challenged to come back to wakeful, purposeful alertness.

She goes on to describe TV as addictive (hence the title of the book) for parents and for children. She describes the way parents use TV, as a way to entertain kids when they are sick, to calm them when they are upset, to help them transition to new activities, as akin to drugging them. This is over the top, but I get her point.

The whole idea that TV affects the brain and "consciousness" is interesting and scary but, unfortunately, she uses very little fact and lots of stories about kids "zoning out". She asserts that the visual images presented in such a flattened visual field is really a "sensory assault" to young brains, one that "activates an immediate passive response in many young viewers". She goes on to link the constant shifting of visual frames in most TV programs to ADHD but uses only anecdotal stories and quotes from doctors with no mention of specific research. ARG. Give me STATS!



So, if you're still reading, what do you all do about TV? What do you make of her arguments (or, at least, of my poorly summarized versions of her arguments)?

PS. I should just mention here that I was raised on TV from a young age and can tell you all about every single game show, soap opera, and laugh-track sitcom from the 80's. And I have no brain damage (that I can link to TV, anyway). I'm STILL interested in whether TV is a good, necessary, desirable thing to show to my kid(s!).