Baby's Developement & Television

I believe in moderation, it surely can't hurt. I know there are a lot of educational dvds, including baby einsteins etc etc... My LO is 6 months old and funny enough if Mickey Mouse is on he loves to watch, I guess its the colours and music maybe. I really cant see any harm.

very verty little tv viewing with my little man, but he is stimulated in so many other ways I cant credit any particular method for his "learning"
no I dont think its good, overall or proves anything in enhancing development. we spending more time at babes classes, read to him every night and play lots of music and sing to him. Dont think a few hours a week of TV will unravel his world

Our little girl is 21 months now, I don't really remember the earlier months anymore but I think around 11 months she started showing a real interest in the TV. We got her innocent teletubby and barney dvd's and one day when I put teletubbies on for her, the next moment she came running, crying to be picked up - Noonoo scared her, the movie that the tubbies watch is of a little dog running after a ball and it upset her SO much that we stopped the tv all together for a while.

It's all nice and well and a lovely babysitter but (21months now) she's starting with nightmares after watching new things. I can't even put Nemo, Shrek, toy story 3 etc on because it's scary and they just don't understand what they are looking at.

And the other day she had just woken up from a nap and hubby and I were watching a movie (shallow hal - stupid movie but it was the only thing on and we were bored) and it went into this sex scene, we were all just sitting there and I look over and B's eyes are glued, look again and for the first time realize what I was looking at and how her little mind might be perceiving it. It frightened me how desensitized we as a society have become.

So no more normal tv unless a kiddies program that I know is ok and only dvd's that we know are okay for her and we watch it with her (even for the 100th time) and explain everything to her over and over again.

Maybe its then safe to say that even though children's programmes are not educational.... its entertaining!

Ladies thank you for your insight! Julz and Gloeiwurmpie thank you for the links you have attached. Now at least I have something to use as motivation for them to turn the tv off. I believe wathcing a moderate amount of tv is fine, but not at 7 months and definitely not just anything! My boy just loves books and I would ask them to rather show him books than tv!

Thank you!

I think allowing small children to watch TV all is day is certainly not a good thing. School/daycares should have a set time for TV, different times for different age groups. The shows should be age related. I would not be happy if my child went to a daycare where the TV was on permanently.
I allow my LB of 17 months to watch a Barney DVD, or something similar in the evenings while I am preparing dinner.
My LB absolutely loves watching Barney but I agree with Julz that a child of such a young age gains no educational value from watching such shows.

I am not sure whether if it is this article that tells about the refunds given to parents who bought "baby einstein dvds" (or something similiar, I can't remember). Fisher and Price (the production company, not sure who it was) had to refund parents because it was basically proved that these baby dvd's are harmful to your childs development......