Television

I read Buy, Buy Baby this weekend at the recommendation of some militantly anti-TV mamas.

While it makes an excellent case against the notion that TV can be educational for babies and toddlers, I'm sort of unimpressed. I mean, first--welcome to the Great Big Duh. You have to be a special sort of stupid to think TV will make a 6 month old more intelligent. I understand that plenty of people seem to think that Baby Einstein and the like will do just exactly that, but plenty of people are operating at an 8th grade reading level, ya know?

So, I already knew that the baby genius thing was a load of crap. What I really wanted to know was what level of television viewing has been reasonably proven harmful. In Buy, Buy Baby, Thomas states that a lot of the conclusions from The Plug-In Drug, upon further investigation, have been show to be somewhat overblown. But, she never states how that is. Her main conclusion seemed to be that there isn't much known about the matter. Researchers don't know what the end result of very early screen time might be (though, she tosses in an off-hand comment that it may correlate to autism. Big ol' honking may, there, right?

What she does mention, and what actually matters to me as I've seen it in action with my nephew, is that the current state of marketing and programming to children tends to convince little brains that they don't want to read books that don't have much to do with television. I bought my nephew Little Golden Books last year--The Pokey Little Puppy and an adaptation of Cars. He gave The Pokey Little Puppy back to me. For real. A four year old returned the present, because, "I don't like that."

"You only like the ones you've seen on TV, huh?"

He nodded solemnly.

That is certainly not what I want for my boy.

Now, I know there's more to my nephew's state of mind than watching the occasional episode of Sesame Street. He's one of those kids that's been constantly in front of a screen since birth. DVD player in the car. DVD's at restaurants. TWO televisions in his room. Reading isn't a priority in his house. His mother just doesn't care about that sort of thing.

But, for me, the thought of a childhood without picture books is pretty depressing.

The question is, where's the balance?

Going screen free isn't an option in our house. Just plain isn't. I have to work on a computer. My husband is a total addict--one of those "television is background noise" people. It drives me nuts. And, background television has been demonstrated as being bad for little kids. But, the fact of the matter is that I like Sesame Street. And, I'd like to share it with my kid when he's a bit older.

How much TV is too much? How much is just enough? And, how do you get your husband to take it all seriously?