Tuesday, May 24, 2005

depends on what you are calling media?

Classical music is suppose to be good for infants, we played a lot of Jazz for GianC.
So I don't think the local public Classical or Jazz station would have any harmful effects on an infant. I know that GianC. hated Metal, Noise and any extreme guitar music when he was an infant, now he likes punk though and some more crazy electronic music like drum n' bass and IDM, Aphex Twin in particular, I tend to believe that you should stick with Classical, Jazz and mellow music for infants.

Julieanne listens to Urban/hip-hop and R&B stations, which have tons of commercials and bad lyrics, I often wonder if that is good for little ones to hear, not the lyrics so much at a young age because they don't fully get them, but the commercials.
While watching TV, Julieanne mutes the volume on commercials just coz she doesn't like them, but I've read that it's a good thing to do when watching TV with children.

But can't you make a similar argument against any media?? Posted by Hello

Monday, May 23, 2005

TV = BAD -but- TV = INSTANT BABYSITTER?

TV is extremely bad for infants, studies show that it affects they their brains develop, it contributes to ADD (or whatever they are calling it now) children over one should only watch 20-30 minutes a day, A few people sent me emails about this study, if I ever come across it again I'll post it. I'm worried because with all the upheaval going on in my home, we've been letting GianC. watch a lot more TV, and I've noticed that Matteo will watch the TV as well when it is on. I've started to face his swing at where GianC. is sitting and away from the TV.

Julieanne and I definitely notice a change in GianC's behavior when he watches more than an hour a day, he plays less, is less imaginative, and more irritable when you don't let him watch TV. I've found that when we aren't allowing him to watch a lot of TV he still asks for it and gets mad when we don't turn it on, but within five minutes he'll be occupying himself with his toys.

Books and story telling are the best combatants to a child's desire to watch TV. That being said GianC is watching TV right now, a Charlie Brown Video, and it makes him totally happy, but as I think I've said here before, our job is not to be our children's friend, but to be a responsible parent, who some times pisses them off for their own good.

I've made video's from his favorite EDUCATIONAL PBS shows, so if I ever need to crap out and use the TV as a temporary babysitter, I can put him in front of something that isn't going to be hyper-edited or have a bunch of commercials.
On a contrary note, a great bargain now-a-days is children's video's since everyone is switching over to DVD, you can find great deals in major chain record/video stores because they are all dumping video for DVD. We've gotten a slew of $15-20 videos for $2-5! We also just bought an dual VCR/DVD to have an extra VCR, because they are going the way of the 8-track player, so we don't want to be stuck with no way to watch our videos 10 years from now.