[dolinsky]

My son is 21 months and we have never sat him down in front of a TV with the express purpose being education (so no Baby Einstein DVDs...what a joke) nor babysitting (passive viewing of a cartoon). He has been exposed to my iPad, my wife's iTouch and both of our phones, and Cablevision provides a 'Kids Music Channel' which plays a variety of kid-friendly music while cycling through a dozen or so static images including ballons, a rubber duck in water, and a car.

The only line in that article that I take issue with is the following: 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.

Maybe it's because we read to my son daily and have incorporated teaching him sign language from the time he was 4 months, but he most definitely can recognize the images on the screen and frequently both speaks and signs the correct image on the screen (balloon, duck, dog, car). If we had never done any of these activities with him then I highly doubt he would be able to recognize the images on the TV, and there might be a distinction between understanding and recognizing that I am not making, but he most definitely is displaying some sort of connection between the images on the TV and the books/drawings/in person experiences he has.

I think the key take away from this, or other studies of its kind, is that passive media should not be the influential experience that a child so young should be exposed to.

[adestefan]

My daughter is almost the same age as yours and does the same thing. The only time we have the TV on with her around is either the Toddler Tunes channel or sports (mostly because it's the only thing we ever watch around those times). One thing I've noticed is that my daughter never sits down in front of the TV just to watch. She has no desire to do it at all. The closest she comes is she'll says "Dance, dance" and point to the TV. If we turn on the music channel she starts bouncing around, dancing with myself or my wife, or picks up a doll to dance with.

We also read every night, but don't do the sign language thing.

[maratd]

> incorporated teaching him sign language from the time he was 4 months

If you don't mind elaborating on this, why did you teach him sign language?

[Homunculiheaded]

Having it so your baby can ask for milk long before they get upset or too hungry is great, having them tell you that they're finished eating is much better than having them just throw food on the ground ;) Babies are cognitively capable of communicating they just haven't developed the skills for speech yet.

[ToastOpt]

This! We started baby sign and could communicate these basics with our daughter before she was a year old. It might not sound like much to start communicating 6 months earlier, but I can only describe it thusly: awesome.

[markbnine]

It's pretty common. . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_sign_language

[Alex3917]

It's a popular trend because kids are able to do sign language before they're able to speak. IIRC it doesn't seem to help their language acquisition or cognitive develop at all, but it doesn't seem to hurt much either.

[pyre]

I've heard that it can lead to less frustration when the child has a means to communicate with the parents. If they know enough to be able to sign their brains are developed enough to want to communicate something.

As a counter-point, my daughter did not pick up on sign language at all. The advice that we got was to stick with a single sign and keep at it until she signed it back at us. My wife chose "Milk," but that was probably a poor choice. I don't think that she recognized "Milk" as being an object until well after she was speaking. It wasn't until she started drinking non-breast milk that she started saying "milk."

Now she's 19 months old and the only sign language that she know is "more," but she has an great vocabulary. She can even say her own name and the names of all of her friends. (It's also really cute when she says 'zombie')

[alttag]

  > I've heard that it can lead to less frustration when the
  > child has a means to communicate with the parents.

Absolutely. Our youngest kids learned a small handful of signs (five or so) before they could speak, and it made things much easier. "More", "milk" (was hard to teach, but when it stuck it was great), "banana", and few others. Someone else here said "done" was useful, and I wish we would have done that one.

[ryusage]

It's pretty common to teach children a little bit of sign language before they can talk, actually. I remember being really impressed that my niece was able to ask for more of something (generally food) using sign language long before she spoke her first word.

[phuff]

We're doing this with our second child now. It removes a lot of frustration from the parents and the kids when the child can actually communicate about what they want, see, hear, think, etc. It seems to cut down on fits, and definitely helps us communicate. As one of the other commenters said kids' language apparatus is fully functioning before they have the fine motor skills necessary to make all the speech sounds they need to say words, so it's a nice hack :) Teach them sign language which they have enough fine motor skills to use until their mouth control gets to the point that they can speak.

Our first kid is now 5 and doesn't really remember any signs, but he said sentences and told stories even in sign language before he could speak well.

[vidarh]

> As one of the other commenters said kids' language apparatus is fully functioning before they have the fine motor skills necessary to make all the speech sounds they need to say words

To add to this: My son is 30 months, and his speech is coming along well, but one really fascinating part is how he will construct sentences that are far more elaborate than what he can say, and substitute "missing" words for with a specific sound.

It is clear these aren't "just" sounds from how he'll repeat phrases with the right number of "words", just some of them are padded out because he doesn't know how to say them yet, and then gradually more words will get added to the various phrases as he figures out how to pronounce them.

[ominous_prime]

Children can usually learn to sign before they can learn to talk. My toddler had a vocabulary of about a dozen signs before he could say any useful words. It help relieve a lot of their frustration, and generally makes them happier when they can communicate.

[vidarh]

We didn't teach our son signs on purpose, but he picked up some by himself before he could speak.

For example, we would point at a bottle of milk to see if he wanted some, and he would soon start copying our gesture by holding up one hand as if a bottle placed upright, and pointing at it with his other hand. Soon he would do that whenever he wanted milk, before he got thirsty enough to start crying.

A lot less guesswork for us, and a lot less crying for him.

[vidarh]

> The only line in that article that I take issue with is the following: 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.

Yes, that line basically tells me that either these doctors don't have kids or they haven't been paying attention to them.