Kelake

I have a confession to make – today my daughter and I are going to watch allot of tv. I’ve temporarily moved my “office” into the tv room and she is watching a series of Pooh Bear movies while I prepare for some upcoming meetings. I always feel a sense of guilt over resorting to TV to entertain her when I get busy like this – her mom is out all day as well. It happens very rarely but one time is too many.
New research indicates that parents should choose videos with high interactive content if they want their children to be educated as well as entertained by their time in front of the tube.
“By age 2, children have figured out that other people are a primary source of information about the world, and they use social cues such as facial expression and where a person looks or points to gather that information. As a result, they are more likely to learn from a person on video whom they perceive as a conversational partner,” psychologist Georgene Troseth of Vanderbilt University says. “In our study, if a video was not interactive, children were much more likely to dismiss the information being conveyed.”
“There is good evidence from other research that watching shows such as Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues in which characters speak directly into the camera and wait for responses can positively impact children’s mental and language development,” Troseth said. “Our new findings have implications for educational television aimed at toddlers, as well as for the use of video images in research with this age group.”
One side effect of her occaisional movie watching is that it fuels her imagination. She will be a Tiger all week I think.
Source.

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this. This is a Japanese video on YouTube demonstrating how to put on a BandAid so that it stays on all day long. It’s in Japanese but the visuals are pretty easy to follow so you should be able to get the gist of it. The video clip included, after the jump.

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I want my Baby TV. Maybe it’s where we live and how we have arranged our house, or maybe we have latched on to at least one good value. But our children seldom watch TV and I never want to see that change. Not everyone agrees or people agree but make no effort to change.
In fact, BabyFirstTV, the first 24-hour channel with programming catering exclusively to children ages 6 months to 3 years old, premiered recently through DirectTV. Obviously there is a market for this kind of product – to those who have little time for this whole parenting thing – either by choice or by consequence.
TV is the great parenting replacer. The one time a week our daughter watches one of her favourite tapes she is all but unreachable. You could be talking to her, jumping up and down, or singing at the top of your lungs. She doesn’t know you exist. Maybe that is what people are looking for.
“”Using videos and television in this age range is basically an uncontrolled experiment on youngsters,” said Dr. Donald Shifrin, the organization’s spokesman.”
“For many harried parents, though, keeping the TV turned off is all but impossible.”
It’s for every parent to decide. From ABC News.

Parenting Ideas has an excellent article detailing some tips for making time-outs work. It’s a technique we use with some success. I wrote about this in “Time-outs: How to make them work” back in March when I found a few articles supporting different points of view. It’s surprisingly controversial.
In the off-chance you are unfamiliar, the wikipedia describes Time-outs as the following: “A time-out is an educational (mainly parenting) technique recommended by many pediatrists and developmental psychologists as an alternative to spanking and other traditional forms of discipline. In brief, the idea is to keep the child isolated for a limited period of time, intended to allow it to calm down, learn coping skills and discourage inappropriate behavior. It is also a time for parents to separate feelings of anger toward the child for their behavior and develop a plan for discipline”
10 Tips for Making Time-outs Work – Parenting Ideas

“Roses and breakfast in bed may be a classic Mother’s Day gift, but parenting guru Ann Douglas says what moms really want is children who eat and sleep well.
Douglas says her new books – Sleep Solutions for your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler, and Mealtime Solutions for your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler – came about after interviews with “a gazillion” frustrated parents. One stressed-out woman asked Douglas to “please not write another book that is going to make parents feel guilty.”
Eating and sleeping – those basic tenets of life that we parents always fret over. It always amazes me just how many children in Taiwan live on so little sleep. I can be out late at night and still see families out with their children. It seems that literally Taiwan is full of people who refuse (or cannot) to get a good nights sleep. The result in parents is what you might expect but the effect on children is more profound. You have a nation of children sleeping their time away in classrooms, short attention spans, and aggressive behaviour. I’m generalizing but it’s not far from the truth.
Read the Rest of the article.
Purchase Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler at Amazon