Ask the Mediatrician

How do I stop myself from parenting with television?

 Q: I am the first to admit that my children use TV, video games, and computers for more than five hours a day. I don’t like this about myself, but I also get them outside, and I guess I feel like I am doing my best at balancing all of this. I know it is easier for me to get my chores done around the house if my toddler is entertained by Noggin or Nick, Jr., and I guess I’ve let their marketing convince me that it’s okay to watch for hours on end because it’s “educational.” Sigh. How do I stop this? How can I go backward from what I am conditioned to do? What can replace these easy “babysitters” so that I can save my mental health? Very intrigued by your research.
-Looking for Balance, in Dallastown, PA

A: Dear Looking,

First of all, you have nothing to feel guilty about. Parenting requires you to make constant decisions that balance risks with benefits. Making decisions about whether and how to use media at different points in your child’s life depends on a variety of factors, including how much information you have.

Let’s start with an analogy: In the 1950s, most parents let their kids ride in cars without seat belts, and car seats were not required by law until 1978. As more families purchased more cars, more accidents happened, and a solution for keeping children safe was needed. The parents of the 1950s should not feel guilty for not buckling their kids in; they simply did not have the information or tools at the time. This is similar to the issue of media use. As more media types are created and kids use media more often, information about how to keep kids healthy is spreading, and parents can begin to think differently about their decisions.

Just because there are car accidents doesn't mean we don't use cars at all; we simply found ways to make them safer for kids. So let's do the same with media: What "seat belts" can we use here to keep kids healthy? 

An important one, as you mentioned, is limiting the amount of time your child spends with screen media so that he has more time to do things that are actively good for his growing brain. You are already on your way to making a difference there, simply by paying attention. Toddlers love to be near their parents, doing similar tasks, or feeling like they're helping. Here are some ideas for activities that can occupy him and still allow you to get your chores done:

• When you need to make dinner, hand him a box of uncooked macaroni and a big serving spoon. He’ll have a grand old time moving the noodles from one pot to the other (and even sorting out the shapes, if you put in different ones).
• When you need to pay the bills, sit at the kitchen table with him and give him some playdough or a coloring book.
• When you need to take a shower, place a dishtub of water on a towel on the bathroom floor and have him wash a baby doll.
• When you need to fold laundry, have him pick out all the socks and put them in a pile, or "fold" washcloths.

As he grows and becomes more ready to benefit from screen media, here are some ideas for other “seat belts” you can use as well.

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®

My daughter is being bullied on Facebook; what can I do?

Q: My daughter is 14 and has been bullied every day for over the past year. She has now been bullied by lots of girls and boys from her school on Facebook. She has gone through this for too long now, and all the school will do is suspend these kids for a week—then they come back and it will start again. Can I keep her home from school and give her some kind of home tutoring?
-Kazy, from JustAsk on Education.com

A: Dear Kazy,

You can certainly keep your child home. It is the school’s job to educate and socialize your child in a safe, healthy, nurturing environment. It seems that you have made your concerns known to the school leadership and that they have responded as schools often do—by punishing the bullies, but not creating a long-term solution.  Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t change the culture of the school, which means that these situations will continue to develop. You can support your daughter and encourage such change within the school by taking the following steps:

1. Address the immediate problem by connecting with your daughter’s natural advocates. Her doctor, teacher, guidance counselor, school nurse, and coach are all mandated reporters of child abuse or neglect, which means that they must report even suspicion that she is in danger of abuse (by the kids) or neglect (by the school). Such reports are confidential, and they do not need to name possible perpetrators or locations—those are for the social services department to investigate.

2. Enlist even unlikely-seeming allies in creating a safer, happier, healthier school environment. A culture that allows bullying to occur is a problem for the whole community to address. Therefore, reach out to--and band together with--all kinds of parents, especially parents of one or more of the alleged bullies. They don’t want their children to be in trouble any more than you want your children to be victimized, and few parents want their kids to be subject in any way to a bullying culture. Think of how powerful it would be to have parents stand together to say, “We don’t want our children to be bullies, victims, or bystanders—we don’t want bullying in the lives of our children any more!”

3. Engage your local press. Bullying is international news right now, so your regional newspapers, radio, and TV outlets will be interested in a local connection to this epidemic.

4. Use electronic media to make your concerns known to the wider public. Although it might be helpful for your daughter to at least temporarily close her Facebook account and report the cyberbullying to Facebook (which does not want their service used for that purpose), there are ways of using media to improve her situation. For example, you could create, or join, an anti-bullying parent group on Facebook. Or with the help of a trusted adult, your daughter could even create such a group for others her age. Taking leadership in this way can be wonderfully empowering, and that goes a long way toward reducing victimization.

Finally, you and your daughter could join with like-minded parents around the world who have become fans of the Center on Media and Child Health on Facebook where they get regular information and strategies for raising healthy, safe, and successful kids in the Media Age. There you can report how your efforts do, thus sharing what you’ve learned with other communities as well.

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®

My daughter feels left out because she doesn't use the media her friends use--what do I do?

Q: My children know it is not right to watch, play, or listen to things that are not for their ages, and they understand why, as we have explained to them. But their friends tend to walk away from them because of this. For instance, my 12-year-old daughter was asked by her friends to dance to a Lady Gaga song for a show at school. I watched the music video so I could talk to my daughter about it; of course, I said that it was inappropriate for her to dance on it. Her friends told her she was chicken; I told her not to care, and that she would be the one to go really far in life. I would like to know your thoughts on this, as my children’s self-esteem tends to suffer because of the power of the media on children. How do we improve their circle of friends?
-Peer Pressured, in London, UK

A: Dear Peer Pressured,

First of all, I also want to commend you for actually listening to the Lady Gaga song that your daughter’s friends asked her to dance to. Many parents don’t engage with their kids’ media because they feel like they can’t relate to it in any way, but by listening to the song yourself, you invite discussion with your daughter. This gives you a chance to learn what she thinks about it, to share what you think about it, and to keep the conversation open between you.

The main issue here, though, relates the difference between how your daughter uses media and how her friends use media. Part of the challenge is that entertainment media create a common experience that young people can share, whether they’re discussing what happened on The Simpsons or what happened in a basketball game. If a young person doesn’t share in this common experience, she is likely to feel left out. This is especially challenging during the pre-teen years, when social validation begins to come from peers instead of from family.

It sounds like your daughter feels very alone, in part because she’s having trouble finding like-minded peers at school. But there are many young people who are in the same boat as she is—it’s just a matter of finding them. In the Media Age, a great way to do that is through online social networking.

Youth use social networking sites to build communities around everything from shared hobbies to shared chronic illnesses, especially when such communities don’t exist in their immediate environments. For your daughter, finding youth who share other interests of hers might help address this challenge—whether the relationships occur offline or online. For example, one parent I met recently told me that her 12-year-old daughter loves New Moon, an ad-free, adult-moderated site where she has open, honest discussions with other girls. Encourage your daughter to see what’s out there, and take a look for yourself. Although challenges with school friends will still arise, other forums for connection can help her find the social approval she’s looking for without feeling like she has to change herself.

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®

Are violent games more damaging for children with a central auditory processing disorder?

Q: We just found out that our 6-year-old son has a central auditory processing disorder. We do not have TV or video games in our house, but when he visits friends’ houses, they sometimes play the older brother’s extremely violent video games, such as Call of Duty. Since there are fewer screens in our house, when he visits friends with these games, he is very eager to watch and play. Are these very violent games more damaging for children with a central auditory processing disorder? Would even a small amount of screen time with violent games have a harmful effect?
-Learning about Learning Disabilities, in Brooklyn, NY

A: Dear Learning about Learning Disabilities,

There seem to be a few questions here: How do violent media affect any child at age six? And does the central auditory processing disorder put your son at increased risk for being influenced by media?

The greatest concern about violent media is that when people use them, they tend to think the world is more violent than it is. While some segments of the world are certainly very violent (such as a war zone), a child who has very little real-life experience with violence will base his understanding of how the world works on the virtual experiences he has. And even when he says he knows that it’s make believe, he won’t really be able to separate fantasy from reality until he’s about eight. For kids his age, believing that the world is violent is particularly anxiety and fear provoking. That is an issue in and of itself, but in your son’s case, this kind of anxiety has the potential to make the symptoms of his disorder worse. 

To answer the second question, any kind of learning disability or processing problem makes it more difficult to become a critical consumer of information and a self-protective viewer of media. It might sound counter-intuitive, but getting a screen in your own home might help you address this issue. How? By giving you the opportunity to expose him to screen media in ways, for lengths of time, and with content that he can tolerate. You can help him practice responsible, critical media use in his own home. That way, when he visits friends' houses, he has some practice with handling this stimulus, and he won’t have that forbidden fruit effect that you describe.

Addressing these issues when your son is in the care of other adults can be tricky. But it is certainly within your rights to ask what he might be exposed to at their house. You can ask that he not be exposed to things that might be harmful to him—just as other parents might tell someone about their child’s food allergy or fear of dogs. Ultimately, what will protect him in such situations is teaching him to take care of himself. He will learn to put his seatbelt on in other people’s cars, and he can also learn to say, “I really don’t want to watch this. Can we go play in the sandbox?”

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®

My daughter can't sleep because of a scary news story, what can I do?

Q: In spite of telling my 6-year-old daughter about stranger danger, she kept running to the front door and opening it as soon as the doorbell rang. One day, I told her the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping story and explained to her that it is not safe to run to the door when strangers ring the bell. I told her to let adults do the talking when that happens. Ever since I told her this story 4 months ago, she comes to our room scared at night and says that she wants all the lights on in the house. She’s worried that some bad guy is going to come and get her from her bedroom window. I guess I was the one who invited the trouble by telling her Elizabeth’s story, but now I don’t know how to convince her that that is not going to happen and that we will be there for her. What should I do?
-Facing Fears, in Scottsdale, AZ

A: Dear Facing Fears,

There seem to be two questions at play here: how do you address the terror your daughter has been experiencing ever since hearing this highly publicized story, and how can you teach her not to answer the door (unaccompanied) without scaring her? Fear reactions to media are quite common for young children in particular, even from descriptions of said media. In fact, a survey of 5-12 year olds showed that 37% of the children were scared by something they saw on the news, and they were most often affected by stories of stranger violence.

Studies about how to help kids deal with scary news stories show that it is effective when parents actively help their children understand what they are seeing and hearing.  However, since she heard about the story secondhand rather than seeing it herself, it sounds like you are doing all of the right things by trying to calm her fears.  Since she is still too scared to sleep, I would suggest that you discuss the situation with her pediatrician to determine whether it would be helpful for her to work through these fears with a therapist. In addition, because it sounds like some of your anxieties might have come through when you told her Elizabeth Smart’s story, it might be worthwhile for you to meet with the same therapist to talk about strategies for handling the situation moving forward. As parents, our own fears and confidence in dealing with such situations communicate far more powerfully than the words we say, so it’s possible that managing your own anxiety can help alleviate some of hers.

Regarding the issue of answering the door, part of the challenge with teaching young children to be cautious with people they don’t know is that they are often put in situations like playgrounds, new schools or sports teams where they are being encouraged to interact with people they don’t know. Your daughter runs to the door because she’s excited to try out her new social skills.

So how can you encourage her skills while maintaining her safety? One option is to make it clear to her that it’s great for her to answer the door—but only with you hard at her heels. Your presence will communicate that you are confident in her social skills, but that you are also there to support her no matter who is at the door. This will help her on the path to developing the kind of caution she will eventually learn to exercise on her own. 

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®

Can kids and teens can help each other use media safely and wisely?

Q: Much of the discussion on kids’ media use centers, appropriately, on parent involvement. I’m wondering, though, are there ways kids and teens can help each other use media and technology—from cell phones to the Internet—safely and wisely? Peer support seems like an important angle, given how much kids influence each other as they get older and how much less savvy (and less interested in media) adults are.
-Kids Can Do, in Suburban Chicago

A: Dear Kids Can Do,

Your question gets at something I firmly believe: that kids are experts on media. In fact, in a seminar I conducted at the Harvard School of Public Health, I asked a group of high school students (with whom I'd previously done media literacy work) to teach the entire critical media use component for exactly this reason. Having kids teach about media is a powerful idea partly because they are the true experts. In addition—and perhaps even more importantly—youth tend to listen to their peers and especially to slightly older kids (who they look up to and want to be like) far more than they will listen to their parents. 

So how can kids can help each other, and how can we as adults best prepare them for it? First of all, we know from research that the ways that media are used at home will shape how children understand media’s role in their lives. Not only are parents setting examples for their children at home, but older children are setting examples for younger siblings. For example, when an older brother turns on the TV to watch a specific show, and then turns it off when the show is over, he’s teaching his little sister that media is used for a specific purpose, rather than as something to passively consume.

But there are also more focused ways that kids and teens can teach each other to use media and technology safely and wisely. For example, if kids really enjoy YouTube, they can find videos that give a “behind the scenes” look at how ads are made and then post them to their Facebook profiles to get a conversation going with their friends. Here are two of our favorites: 

• How do they make that burger look so good?

• What does it take to make a regular person into a model? 

Another conversation starter for kids and teens is song lyrics. Even something as simple as asking friends “Have you really listened to the words to this song?” is a good way to talk about paying more attention to media content, since songs are often about topics like relationships, what people do for fun, and how they treat each other.

This approach recognizes that, sooner or later, these young people will be solely responsible for their behaviors, actions, and time management, and it helps them build their broader media literacy skills and self discipline. But this isn’t to say that adults are off the hook—even peer-to-peer support can benefit from adult assistance. Teens can offer adults an open-minded, innovative sense of how media can be used and adults can offer teens wisdom from life experience and the foresight to think about consequences. Taken together, these perspectives create a powerful foundation for the kind of critical media use that best serves youth.

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®

Is it OK for my 2 year old to watch YouTube videos?

Q: Our son just turned two, and his father and I disagree about the value or potential harm of the YouTube videos they watch together, almost daily, for about a half hour. Our extremely verbal son especially loves short, educational, do-it-yourself videos about how to use tools, and I am not unsupportive of him watching these occasionally. They also watch some cartoons/short videos geared for kids, but I think most of these contribute nothing to our son’s development at best, and convey negative messages at worst. It also bothers me that our son frequently asks to watch things on the computer and cries if we say it’s time to play with toys or read books instead (although he will accept re-direction after a few minutes). Your feedback would be most welcome!
- YouTube'ing at Two, in Northern California

A: Dear YouTube'ing,

I know of one young woman who, when she was about three or four, liked the TV show "This Old House.” One day, her father walked into the room where she watching it and, thinking that she was too young to understand what was going on, said, “What does it look like they're doing there?” She looked up at him and said matter-of-factly, “They’re grouting a bathroom, Dad.”

Like this little girl--and, indeed, all children--your two year old is learning from everything in his environment. The tool videos may indeed be helpful for him, if he enjoys building and you’d like him to learn what the videos are teaching. But, as you imply in your concern about negative messages, he will also learn from everything else. He will learn from the cartoon Tom and Jerry, for example, that steamrolling a cat won’t prevent it from jumping up, uninjured, a minute later. Young children are quite literal. That's part of why one of our top five tips for using media in healthy ways is to choose content carefully. What's great about the way you're using YouTube is that your husband is not only choosing the content specifically for your son, but he's also watching it with him (another one of our tips!).

To address your concern about your son's attachment to videos, I might recommend helping him understand when he can and can't use the computer. Toddlers do really well with routines, so one approach, if you decide to keep the videos as part of his daily life, is to incorporate this YouTube time into his routine. Maybe there will be 20 minutes of video time with dad after an afternoon nap, or right before brushing his teeth in the morning. That way, your toddler will know when to expect it; he can look forward to it as part of his day and know when it's over that it will happen again tomorrow. Making it regular instead of random will also take away the sense that it's a "treat" and that if he cries for it, he might get it.

It can be tricky to get on the same page as your spouse about these issues, and it might be helpful for you to think about whether there's something that could change that would make you more comfortable with the YouTube watching (Educational videos but no cartoons? Watching for 15 minutes instead of 30?) or whether you're uncomfortable with it all together. Approach the topic in much the same way that you would discuss which school is right for your son--not as a question of right and wrong but rather as a way to figure out what you want for your son, and what guidelines you can create and honor together.

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®