rivka | (no subject)

Our spectacular troubles yesterday morning were followed by a very, very long day of whining, crying, coughing, nose-running, general patheticness, and the, uh, incapacitation of two more pairs of pajamas. She napped for a grand total of half an hour and then woke herself with a coughing fit and couldn't get back to sleep, despite her obvious exhaustion.

I grew tenser and tenser as my own bedtime approached, anticipating an awful night. I channeled my anxiety into preparation, loading the diaper bag with two kinds of medicine (Advil and Triaminic, each loaded into an exterior bottle pocket with the appropriate dose-measuring device), two spare sleepers, two crib sheets, a change of clothes for me, an extra pacifier, water, diapers... everything I could think of that I might need to handle a middle-of-the-night sick toddler. I had already piled clean cloth diapers (our standard mop-up tool) next to the rocking chair in her room.

What happened? She slept through from 7:30 to 6:30, and woke up cheerfully demanding apple juice. She ate a decent breakfast. She was a little bit dismayed to discover that yesterday's unlimited-TV policy[1] had been rescinded, but mostly she bounced around playing. As she and Michael chauffeured me to work, she kept up a constant stream of song requests: "How about 'Little Cabin in the Woods?' How about 'Eensy-Weensy Spider'? Alex have a tiny spider."

Behold the two-year-old's amazing powers of recuperation!

[1] Yesterday she watched so much TV that I sort of expected to see her brain leak out her ears right then and there. Two episodes of "Sesame Street Old School," an episode of Blue's Clues, and two half-hour Disney Sing-Along videos, for a grand total of 3 1/2 hours of TV. She was pretty much too sick to play or go outside, all day long, so we read every single book in the house (I even volunteered, out of parental sympathy and desperation to entertain her, to read all the ones that she loves and I hate) and filled up the rest of the time with what felt like a ridiculous amount of television.

So I was a little bit shocked, this morning, to Google and find that the average American child aged 2-17 watches an average of 3 1/2 hours of TV a day. I'm not anti-TV - Alex usually watches a half-hour to an hour a day, and I often watch an hour or two myself after she goes to bed. Most of the research I've seen that condemns TV as a medium is scientifically suspect. I don't want Alex watching commercials or age-inappropriate programming[2], but I don't lose sleep over an hour of vegging-out screen time in the middle of a day packed with developmentally rich activities. But 3 1/2 hours? More than a quarter of a preschooler's waking time? Every single day? Tests my resolution not to be judgmental about other people's parenting choices.

[2] My definition of age-inappropriate programming seems to be a lot broader than most people's. I don't want my two-year-old watching plots about romance/falling in love/getting married; children experiencing loss of, or prolonged separation from, their parents; people being evil and/or wanting to harm other people; or people or animals dying. None of those things are normal concerns of a two-year-old, with the exception of parental separation - a normal anxiety I don't want to feed by exposing her to examples of severe and prolonged separation. These objections pretty much rule out the entire Disney oeuvre, and yet the preschool years are supposed to be the height of love for Disney feature films.

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I'm very happy to hear of the fast recovery! Boo often surprises us by being great all day and then having a terrible night, or being awful all day and then sleeping straight through. No rhyme or reason.

And Boo is six months, and already watches t.v. In that we will have the tv on while he's in the room with us and he sometimes looks at it fascinated, and I do actually sometimes put Little Einsteins or our one Baby Einstein dvd on for him to watch. He tends to watch for a few minutes, then play with whatever toy he has in his hands, then watch again for a bit, etc. If it is our show that is on, I make sure that he's not facing the tv and I divide my attention between the tv and interacting with him and his toys. We have TIVO, so commercials are never watched. His daycare does not have a tv, so I know he is not exposed at all during the day.

At what point did you stop watching your shows around Alex, or did you start that from the beginning?

Elena watches Sesame Street when we're home, and otherwise is in and out of the room while we're watching - things like Seinfeld reruns (which will be less appropriate in a few years, I suppose).

I was sick yesterday, and so watched a lot of TV myself. She was in and out - not always paying attention. At one point, I was watching an episode of ST:TNG, and there was an injured Romulan lying on the ground. She kept saying "Take nap. Take nap." Uhhhh, yeah.

At what point did you stop watching your shows around Alex, or did you start that from the beginning?

At the very beginning, like when I was on my 3-month maternity leave, I watched anything at all in front of her. I think by the time she was Boo's age I had stopped watching stuff with a lot of violence, gore, or angry shouting, because I wasn't sure when it would start disturbing her. I still watched home improvement shows, cooking shows, baseball, and televised poker when she was awake and around. She mostly ignored them, and I tried to make sure that she was positioned so that the screen was behind her back.

We stopped watching our shows in front of her entirely when she was... I guess she was about one, or a little older. We stopped because she had started paying attention to the screen.

I mostly watch AB and some of the stuff on HGTV, The Gilmore Girls (which does have some shouting) and other low-key stuff. The one I feel guilty about, upon reflection, is Numb3rs, and I hereby declare that I will not watch that one when he's awake from now on.

If he went to bed earlier it would be easy, but his last bottle isn't until 10:30, and before then we get a couple of naps, but they can be as short as 20 minutes on some days. The kid doesn't sleep as much as he used to. I used to get two hour+ long naps in the evenings. (He sleeps a full 8 hours at night, and then has 3-3.5 hours of naps at daycare.)

TV is a weird one. On the days it goes on, it's mainly because I am ded, so it's on for hours. But it's not on every day. It wouldn't surprise me if we've averaged much more than 3.5 hours a day over the past few months, because if the TV in our house is on it's almost guaranteed to be because Linnea is watching it; neither Rob nor I do, much, as in, not every week and not even every month, though we try to watch weekly when Dr Who is on. And of course we watch what Linnea watches so we know what she's getting.

I don't mind things about things (animals, animated objects, etc) dying - Linnea knows we eat meat, and the whole fish thing is obvious, after all - but I don't like things killing other things, so most nature documentaries are right out.

I remember a wave of official concern about TV watching among kids when I was about ten. I took things like that to heart (I even checked Seduction of the Innocent out from our library and got worried when I was maybe twelve.), so I wrote down the shows I watched in a week. I'm sure it was a conservative list, leaving out things like "spending 45 minutes after school listlessly flipping between the five available channels." I still have this list. I was watching "The Monkees" and "Batman" and "Addams Family" re-runs, and "Bugs Bunny" on the weekend. It worked out to more than I thought it would. Next time I find the list, I'll post it on my LJ for giggles.

Sarah watches less TV than average, I guess, but it still feels like she's "glued to the tube" from the time she gets home until she finally conks out. Subtracting some time for supper, I guess she puts in about 2-1/4 hours on weekdays, and brings her average up on the weekend. Hm, maybe she's average. Foo.

I'm so glad Alex is feeling better, and that last night was restful. TV-watching tends to be a heavily charged issue (so of course I'm going to comment about that.) I'm so uncomfortable with little kids watching tv that I can't join in any of the heated arguments on the topic at all. I just sort of marvel at the family story that my parents bought a tv when I was 9 months old, because they were afraid I'd miss out on the developmental and educational opportunities that came with children's television.

My definition of age-inappropriate programming seems to be a lot broader than most people's. I don't want my two-year-old watching plots about romance/falling in love/getting married; children experiencing loss of, or prolonged separation from, their parents; people being evil and/or wanting to harm other people; or people or animals dying.

There's a considerable difference between 2 and 3, though "preschooler" goes up to age 4. But I was utterly fascinated by the idea of romance/falling in love/getting married when I was 3...that's when my Uncle Harold started introducing his fiancee to the extended family, and they were planning a wedding. My parents had already explained to me how I could acquire a new cousin (it had happened fairly recently), but the idea of acquiring a new aunt was so boggling I kept asking about it. WHY was he marrying her? What do you mean, they fell in love?

These objections pretty much rule out the entire Disney oeuvre, and yet the preschool years are supposed to be the height of love for Disney feature films.

I agree with you that Disney movies are problematic for little kids, though my objections have more to do with sexism that can be so insidious if you can't think critically about it. (Preschoolers don't have much perspective. It comes with the territory.) There's a family story that I tried to watch one movie when I was 3, and it freaked me out so badly my parents didn't even try to take me again for another year. I don't remember seeing Disney movies until I was 6. Something changed, with Disney marketing all their movies for home viewing, and marketing them differently, mostly for very young viewers. A friend of mine flinches from some of what she sees in those movies, and doesn't know how to explain them to her preschooler. She has positive memories of seeing them when she was a girl, and wants to share them with her daughter, but she feels it has to be now. 6 or 7 would be "too old."

Two of my cats will watch the TV fascinated, but I'm pretty sure they have no idea what's going on. Spirit will even watch it with her head upside-down and be fascinated.