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Daycare At Home May Double TV Time For Your Children
A new study published today highlights an increasing concern that our children are watching too much TV. And if Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute is correct, children in home daycare may in fact be exposed to more than twice the TV time than those who visit daycare centers.
“Previous estimates of screen time for babies and pre-school children relied on parental reports of viewing in the home, yet the majority of pre-schoolers are now commonly cared for by someone other than a parent, away from home in a child care setting,” the study states. “Prior studies have estimated that preschool children watch 2-3 hours of TV per day at home.
According to the researchers, previous data on screen time in child care settings are more than 20 years old and don’t accurately reflect today’s cultural factors affecting media use among children.”
Christakis looked at television use in 168 child care programs in four states and found that among preschool-aged children, those in home-based daycares watched TV for 2.4 hours per day on average, compared to 0.4 hours in center-based settings. With the exception of infants, children in home-based child care programs were exposed to significantly more television on an average day than children in center-based programs (infants: 0.2 vs. 0 hours; toddlers: 1.6 vs. 0.1 hours; preschool-aged children: 2.4 vs. 0.4 hours).
“It’s alarming to find that so many children in the United States are watching essentially twice as much television as we previously thought,” said Christakis. “Research continues to link excessive preschool screen time with language delay, obesity, attentional problems and even aggression depending upon content. At the same time, studies show that high quality preschool can be beneficial to children’s development. Unfortunately, for many children, the potential benefits of preschool may be being displaced by passive TV viewing. I suspect many parents are unaware of the frequency and extent of TV viewing in day care settings. Hopefully, these findings will serve as a wake up call for them.”
Christakis recommends avoiding TV time for babies entirely and choosing activities that “promote language development and brain growth such as talking, playing, reading, singing and enjoying music” instead.
For children 2 years and older he advised parents to choose age-appropriate programs and involve parents and older children in setting guidelines for what to watch. Total TV time should be limited to two hours per day, keep the TV off during meals and set “media-free” days. TV’s should not be present in bedrooms, Christakis said.
