Updated Nov 23, 2009 - 9:50 am
UW study: Kids in daycare watch too much TV
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KIRO Radio
You're paying for quality child care, but who is doing the baby sitting?
A new study from the University of Washington suggests kids in home-based day care are watching about two-to- three hours of TV, each day, on top of a couple hours of television at home. That's about a third of the time the kids are awake.
Doctor Dimitri Christakis, the lead author of the study, says the concern is what kids are not doing when they're watching television, "They're not engaged in creative play, they're not engaged in physical play, they're not being read to or sung to, (those are) the kinds of things that are really critical for children's development (that) are not happening."
The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages kids, under the age of two, from watching any TV, and strictly limiting how much older children see. Past research has linked excessive TV watching to child obesity and attention problems among other things.
"We do know that good preschool, high quality preschool, is in fact very beneficial to children in terms of their social development, their cognitive development," Christakis said, "but, sitting in front of a television is not the way to foster that."
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