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When I started wondering what kind of parent I would be (which really was just like last week), I gave serious thought as to how much TV the kidlets would watch. Should I be like Madonna and ban all TV? (who knows what the hell Madonna is doing at home anyway, she SAYS no TV but do we really know?) Or should I let them watch the tube while I get my twitter and social media time in. I chose the latter and so far it really is not that bad.
I think the content is what we should be more concerned about because despite all the studies out there, my kids are learning up a storm; far faster than I think I could have ever taught them. They watch a lot of tv too! When I was younger, on my way out the house on a nice Sunday afternoon, I always tried to sneak out if it was after 1pm because at that dreaded hour, Like It Is came on. I hated Like It Is. Truth be told, I really wanted to tell my father what it was: “so you don’t hear those kids out there playing sewer to sewer, calling my name? Is this program really going to do something for me?” At that time, there were no studies around about what television was doing to our vision or our brain cells. We always watched television, so long as the programming was educational. I try to maintain that same ideology at home today. I think it is possible that Kayden watched every episode of Sesame Street ever televised. He watched it religiously at 7am and I DVRed all the episodes during the day. On the very few occasions he woke up in the middle of the night tripping, Elmo and Kayden worked it out while mommy slept. At the age of 1 he could count* to ten and say* his ABC’s. (*his enunciation was a little off but you got the jist of what he was trying to say.) I owe this to PBS & Sprout. (BTW, I absolutely adored those Sprout Please commercials to the Bob Marley tune)
You see, I was not one of those mothers that had the time to go up and down the stairs counting at the ridiculously slow pace while the kid is climbing the stairs. You know what I am talking about, “1-(5 minutes later as he struggles up the first step)-2-(by this time I done forgot what number I was on) because he found a grain of rice on the step and I now have to prevent him from eating it. I did not have time for that! In addition, our house has at most 5 steps so this particular routine would leave him thinking the end of the number train was 5, who needed that?
Imagine my surprise when the mannoy and Kayden were fighting the other day. Kayden hit M’khai with something and took flight up the stairs screaming “ayudame! ayudame!” which translates to “help me! help me!” I was floored. First of all, I am the only person that can speak Spanish in the house and if I was going around screaming ayudame, someone better call the cops! I pondered for a second and figured it out. It was that damn Diego! That is Kayden’s new obsession. You would swear Kayden and Diego went to school together the way he is glued to the screen when Diego comes on. I quizzed him some more on his Spanish and discovered he could say a lot more words and even count to ten in Spanish. This was huge! I could have never taught him this much on my schedule.
So for now, I just enhance what he is learning from Dora, Sesame Street and Diego (and everything else he watches on Noggin and Sprout) by asking questions and incorporating these characters into my daily routines with him. TV is working well for me with him so I do not think I will cut back anytime soon. M’khai on the other hand has mastered the remote control and is reading much better so he is watching all kind of foolishness. Although, he loves the Food Network (about the only thing I will admit to us having in common) and that
