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?

As a child, I did TV. I enjoyed Are you Afraid of the Dark on Saturday evenings, and I remember the heavy feeling of disappointment that settled on me if it was a repeat. Saturday morning were all about sugar cereal, and cartoons in my jammies [until my parents forced me to play soccer, but that's another story] and so TV doesn’t freak me out. After all, I watched it, and I’m not brain dead.

Until I had started Googling…

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 As the work-at-home mom type person, I have become quite the hostess. Granted, not for cocktail parties, holiday dinners, or any gathering involving guests over the age of ten. No, my area of expertise is play dates.

 Play dates and sleepovers at our house tend to follow the same loose pattern. I pick up as many children after school as our mini-van can hold. Note to designers: there is nothing “mini” about a vehicle that easily seats seven easily. A real “mini” treat for mom would be something in the two-seater, possibly convertible category. THAT is a car a mom could have some fun in. But I digress. 

Starved. We then proceed to our home where the van will disgorge a clamoring herd of starving children onto the lawn. They will proceed in an orderly fashion into the house – just kidding. That was a good one. They will proceed into the house like a chaotic gaggle of puppies gamboling and tripping over each other, finally coming to rest en masse in front of our refrigerator.  

Being the savvy and oh-so-together type mom that I am, I have of course stocked our refrigerator in anticipation of this play date. There the children will find a plethora of healthy fruits and vegetables, perhaps some yogurt, to choose from. 

Ha. Another funny. But that WOULD be a good idea wouldn’t it?

Less. No, I’d rather take the road less traveled. That’s the road where the children try desperately to cobble together some nourishment from a half-sleeve of saltines and the quarter cup of sugar frosted something or other left in the bottom of the cereal box.  

With this they also get water. Hey, I’m not cruel. 

I then tell the children to go somewhere, anywhere, but in my kitchen. They can go to the bedrooms, playroom, or even outside. We have a lovely creek just perfect for falling in, tall trees to become stuck in, sharp sticks to run with, and a trampoline for all those craving some ER adventure.  

As you can imagine, our house is QUITE in demand socially. 

Now, there is always that one Mom who is the play date Master. When you pick up your kid at her house she tells you;

“Oh, they had a great time. First we drafted a proposal for the UN peace accord, then just a few arts and crafts where the girls made a water treatment test plant out of recycled foam cups, and then – this is so cute – the girls put together a little musical sketch while I whipped together some homemade costumes to help them along.”

After I host a play date, I inform the play date guest parents thus;

“Oh, the kids had a great time. At least it sounded like they did. I was in my office with the door closed trying to write more articles about what a stellar parent I am and listening to Van Morrison. From what I could hear they did a lot of jumping around outside for a while which ended, as I predicted, with someone crying. So then they watched TV in the playroom. I think they put in a DVD which may have been educational but could have been an old Jane Fonda workout video for all I know. Then, when that was over, they went outside to run in circles and chase each other with sticks again. Oh, and they ate saltine crackers and doughnuts.”

You would think I would be hopelessly unpopular as a social pariah play date mom but curiously; I’m quite in demand.

Space. I think it’s because rather than hover over the children micro-managing their every move and trying to force feed them carrot sticks, I give them what children of a certain age really crave: space. 

Well space, and jumping with sharp pointy sticks.

“You wanna live in the zip, you gotta live by the code.”

10 Reasons Why the New 90210 is Going to Suck and Trash the Gayest Guilty Pleasure of My Late Teens/Early 20s:

1. Aaron Spelling is dead
2. They didn’t get Shannen Doherty
3. They did get Jennie Garth
4. Rob Estes is not playing Kyle McBride
5. Aunt Becky
6. They didn’t get Shannen Doherty
7. The annoying, overacting, spoiled rich girl on last season’s Nip/Tuck is appearing as an annoying, overacting, spoiled rich girl
8. There is a character named Silver Silver (this will be forgiven if she is Donna and David’s love child)
9. According to the clip above, Silver Silver likes to wear obnoxious head bands
10. They didn’t get Shannen Doherty

After watching this I immediately became 6 years old again, sitting on the shag carpet in the family room in front of the TV, eating a half box of Apple Jacks out of a big mixing bowl:

Why don’t they show little uplifting snippets like this between kid shows anymore? Now all we get is Miley Cyrus talking about the favorite thing in her bedroom.