Games and TV

I was talking to a friend yesterday and the conversation fell to babies and television. Plenty of books advise against mixing young children and TV. Asian Parenting Today recommend limiting TV time for babies because it is not interactive. Babies need someone to talk back to them to help with their speech development. TV programs do not provide this.

Baby Talk recommends not to introduce babies to the TV until they are at least a year old. The reasoning for this is that a baby below one year is still trying to make sense of the world around them. Watching programs where inanimate objects are talking confuses the child and impedes their developmental progress because inanimate objects do not talk in real life. After the first year, it is recommended that TV time be limited to half an hour a day.

The hubby and I have decided to adhere to the recommendation from Baby Talk not to allow Gavin to watch TV until he was at least a year old. I remember mentioning this to a friend who was already a mother of a toddler and she said, “That’s how I felt, too, but it’s a lot harder to stick to that plan than you think.”

I know what she was referring to – TV captivates the children and that gives you a bit of time to take a breather and do things you ordinarily wouldn’t be able to because your child demands your attention. Well, that said, I will still try to limit Gavin’s TV time. As he grows older, I hope to encourage him to get involved with outdoor activities like what I used to do. I also want to get him interested in books and the sort of games I used to play when I was younger.

There’s a cool site called Winning Moves that sells the sort of games I used to play, like the Rubik’s cube, Monopoly, Scrabble and many other “old school” games.

I really enjoyed these games when I was young. I hope to introduce Gavin to them when he’s older, too. I wonder if I still remember how to solve the Rubik’s cube?

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