The Power of TV

So far, I've been fairly successful in not having my 1.5 year-old watch TV. Of course there are many, many times when I wish I could just turn on the TV and have her watch a show while I wash dishes, cook, or work on the computer. Alas, those days will come soon enough. The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend any TV watching for children under 2 years old. So I've been fairly diligent in not letting her watch TV. That is not to say that our TV is never on; in fact, occasionally the TV has been on (in her presence) because there's a football/basketball game that we want to watch or I'm catching a snippet of news before dinner. But for the most part, we try to keep the TV off when she's around and when it is on, she doesn't pay much attention to it (much to my relief).

Last Sunday, my husband was setting up the cable box after numerous frustrating visits/calls with Comcast as we "upgrade" our cable package for digital TV. After finally get it to work, he was going through the On Demand option and happen to see some Seasame Street episodes. So he played it just to see if On Demand was working. The second Elmo showed up, Scarlett was riveted to the TV screen and yelling "Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!" She watched about 5 minutes of Seasame Street and loved it! The funny thing is that we never even taught her who Elmo is (or any character) so she must have learned it from daycare. It's the only character she can recognize though. We didn't even feel guilty that she was watching TV because it was just amusing to see her so excited and fascinated with a TV show. On Monday, after I picked her up from daycare, we were reading a book in the living room when she suddenly walked to the couch and grabbed the Tivo remote. She then walked over to the TV, pointed the remote at it, looked at me, and said, "Elmo, Elmo, Elmo!" At first, I was quite surprised that she was basically asking me to put a show on the TV for her. I thought it was cute so I turned on the On Demand thing on cable and played the same Sesame Street episode she saw the day before. She watched it for about 5-10 minutes and thoroughly enjoyed it. After I turned it off, I realized that she has already caught on to the entertainment value of TV and it will be interesting to see how hard it is to keep her away from it for the next four months. (She will be 20-months old tomorrow...)