[derekprior]

I agree that limiting screen time is important, and my wife and I are careful to limit our son's screen time and not expose him to "second hand TV." That said, I take issue with the following passage from the article:

"Even so-called educational videos do not benefit children under 2 because they are too young to be able to understand the images on the screen, the doctors’ group said."

My son watches a DVD from the "Baby Signing Time" series 2-3 times per week. At 15 months, he sports a 30 to 40 word signing vocabulary. While my wife and I work to reinforce many of the more useful signs (more, milk, eat, etc), there are a number that he has picked up straight from the video (banana, coat, cat, etc). As much as I'd like to believe that he's a genius, I think its much more likely that the doctors' group is just wrong about what children can understand on screen.

In the article one frustrated-sounding doctor says no one is listening to the message. Maybe that's because they're preaching zero tolerance rather than moderation. Perhaps that's because they're worried that parents will take moderation too far and they think zero-tolerance is safer. Either way, to say children under two can't learn from a screen is simply wrong. I see the evidence every singe day and the doctors are welcome to see it for themselves.

[vidarh]

My two and a half year old has a number of favorite videos, and when watching them, he will frequently turn to us and tell us to watch and then go on to launch into lengthy verbal explanations of what has happened or what will happen up to about 5 minutes ahead in the video. He's done this for months.

Of course "under two's" versus 30 months is a big gap, but it's not like he just suddenly started telling us these things either - a lot of the words and phrases he's picked up over the last year comes straight from things he's seen on TV or DVD's.