The folks over at Cognitive Daily have posted an article featuring yet another batch of studies that tell us that kids under two shouldn’t be watching TV.

The studies they cite show that toddlers who are given clues to find hidden objects via TV are less successful at finding the objects than the children who are given the clues in person. They summarize by saying:

“So while toddlers can understand what’s going on on TV, they don’t think about what they see on TV the same way older kids and adults do. They don’t connect it back to the real things they encounter in their world, so they can’t learn from TV. Whatever it is your toddler gets from watching TV, these researchers say, it’s not learning.”

I see this phenomenon in my kids clearly. They can both watch an episode of Play with me Sesame and have very different experiences. When my 5 year-old daughter watches the program, she gets up, sings along, dances, and responds to the character’s questions. When my nearly two-year-old son watched the same program alone the other day, he sat mesmerized by the 20-minute program - the lights, the colors, the sounds, but he clearly didn’t appreciate the humor and didn’t understand when to sing and dance with the monstery muppets. When the two of them watch together, I used to think that my son mimicked the program, but now I’m realizing that he was modeling his response after his sister.

So, why do we park our toddler’s in front of the boob tube if it’s not really enhancing their cognitive development? Why are products like Baby Einstein still a staple in nearly every baby shower across the country? Well, while I don’t expect my toddler’s brain to get bigger with Elmo’s help, he is entertained and out of my hair for about 20 minutes while I can change my clothes and start dinner.

After all, it’s not as if I’m telling him to play with my steak knives, right?