Banning TV forever once baby arrives??

One big question of new parenting: do you let your baby watch any TV? Or do you even allow the TV to be on in the same room as the baby? what's a new parent to do?

A recent report from the UK suggested that a high number of babies are spending more time watching TV than with their parents -- a problem made worse by all the new "baby channels" on cable and satellite television (always marketed as "educational" or "developmental"). Another study here in the US showed that babies might lose as much as 10-20 percent of their waking hours watching TV. By the age of 6, 33 percent of children in the US have a television in their own room (yikes, I don't even have a TV in my own room!).

And WHY is this bad? Doesn't television help them learn, like Baby Einstein and all those DVDs and TV channels designed just for babies? It doesn't seem that way. Most experts agree that the more time babies spend sitting in front of the screen, the more their social, cognitive and language development may suffer. Recent studies show that TV-viewing tends to decrease babies' likelihood of learning new words, talking, playing and otherwise interacting with others, including a new study published last Monday in the Archive of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

For years, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has urged parents to eliminate all TV viewing for tots under age 2. As Dr. Michael Rich of the Center on Media and Child Health explains, "TV exposure in infants has been associated with increased risk of obesity, attention problems, and decreased sleep quality. Parents need to understand that infants and toddlers do not learn or benefit in any way from viewing TV at an early age." And as reported in the journal Pediatrics in April 2004, researchers at Children's Hospital in Seattle found that the more television a child watches between the ages of 1 and 3, the greater his or her likelihood of developing attention problems by age 7. Excessive viewing was associated with a 28 percent increase in attention problems. According to Dr. Christakis of this Seattle study, the rapidly moving images on TV and in video games may rewire the brains of very young children, making it difficult for them to focus on slower tasks that require more thought. Others say that TV may, at least temporarily, idle the centers in the pre-frontal cortex that are responsible for organizing, planning, and sequencing thought. And finally, researchers from Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School concluded from a study of 800 children from birth to age 3 that educational DVD and videos geared towards enriching babies and toddlers, such as "BabyGenius," "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," which proclaim to "encourage discovery and inspire," have no benefits. Repeat, no benefits.

So, banning TV for baby sounds like a distinct possibility. Although it also seems that most parents would agree that a little TV now and then can't really do any damage -- the major concern is when the TV becomes a babysitter, and parents plop their babies in front of the tube when they just want some peace and quiet. Right?