Toddlers & Television Watching
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Toddlers love to watch television. The lights, colors, and sounds of the TV can be almost hypnotic for a small child. There are even shows, such as Teletubbies, that are specifically designed for toddlers.
When your toddler watches television, there are some things that you can do to help the experience be more beneficial (or at least less harmful!) These include:
- Know what your child is watching. Use more than just program ratings; read parental reviews to find out if the program is particularly suited to your family. If possible, try to watch an episode or two with your child.
- Set limits. Create a rule about how much TV your child will watch in a day and stick to it. It is earlier to establish limits early on than it is to go back later on and try to wean your child off of too much TV.
- For younger toddlers especially, choose quiet, slow, and calm programs for him to watch. This allows your child to take in more information, and keeps him from becoming over stimulated.
- Talk about television with your child. Help her to understand what the program or programs are about. Help him to understand how commercials work, why they are there, and that you can’t necessarily believe everything that a TV show or a commercial tells you.
- Reinforce TV learning. If the letter of the day on Sesame Street is “B”, then work with your child on drawing the letter. Take him around the house, showing him beds, bowls, belts, and other “B” words.
The question of how much TV is suitable for a toddler to watch is a difficult one. On the one hand, there are advocates such as those at the American Academy of Pediatrics that do not recommend TV at all for children age 2 or younger. The AAP also recommends that older children be limited to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day of educational, nonviolent programs. On the other hand, there are parents who don’t limit their children’s intake of television at all, and the children grow up well-adjusted and healthy.
Most people fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Mostly, it is important that your child has plenty other of experiences, social, emotional, intellectual, and physical that are not in front of the television.
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