Wednesday, April 14

One More Thing to Worry About

So I'm sure that everyone's read by now that TV by babies watching causes ADD in children. "For every hour of television watched daily, two groups of children -- ages 1 and 3 -- faced a 10 percent increased risk of having attention problems at age 7." Web sites about kids are proclaiming that allowing your young child to watch television is akin to child abuse. So what's a beleaguered parent to do?

For the record, Doodles does not watch a lot of TV, although he does watch some. I have a few DVDs and videos (Baby Mozart, the colors and animals videos of Baby's First Impressions, and a few Shalom Sesames), and he watches maybe one a week (sometimes not even that much--he hasn't seen most of the Shalom Sesame tapes yet--they're really for older kids, but I love the idea of them; it's an Israeli-style Sesame Street in English). On a few rainy days when we were cooped up and I was losing it (mostly when Doodles has had one of his many colds), I have given up, sat down, and turned on the Teletubbies to watch with him. And honestly, Doodles attention span for kid shows is limited.

The problem we have is that TV season has officially started in our house. The series that Adam and I watch all come on at night after Doodles's bedtime. No problem. And if they start earlier, well, that's what our Replay is for. But I'm sure all of you know what time of year it is: baseball season. Which has the unfortunate problem of seguing directly into football season. And neither Adam nor I believe in Replaying sports. It's simply wrong. So what's a sports fan to do? Do we not watch our games? Will we be dooming our son to ADD if we have them on while we go about our business? Are we child abusers because we have Pedro on our TV instead of Pavarotti on our radio? Our living room is the center of our house, where we hang out, where we play, where we watch TV. Right now [editor's note: this entry was actually written on Sunday], Adam is watching the end of the Red Sox game, and frankly, Doodles could not care less. He's happily playing with his Roll & Rhyme Melody Block (which he now loves because he can finally get his little arms over it to turn it over) and ignoring the fact that his father is nervously watching Toronto and the Red Sox in overtime (yeah, yeah, "extra innings." Whatever. When is Adam going to learn to love a real sport? Go Dolphins!) (And if Adam is this antsy in the first week of the season, how am I going to deal with him next September/October?) (Just to have one more random aside, did anyone else hear Frank Deford give his NPR commentary on how the Yankee/Red Sox rivalry really isn't because the Red Sox suck? I found the commentary entertaining but Adam just kept stomping around muttering something like, "Stupid, stupid. What a ridiculous report," although the words he used weren't quite that nice. What really amused me, though, was that Deford completely disses the Red Sox and WGBH cuts directly from his commentary into our local pledge drive. Way to increase Boston support, NPR!)

So here are the things I need to worry about other than George Bush: improperly put-in car seats; Kawasaki Disease (I read two articles about it: one in the New Yorker and one in a back issue of Brain, Child); the state of our public schools; kidnapping; falls off the changing table; autism (which, until recently, large heads were thought to be a sign of); accidentally eating something with peanuts because the doctor told me that will make Doodles susceptible to peanut allergies; that my son will be gay and the Constitutional ban on gay marriage will be passed so he can't get married to the person of his choice; did I start solids too early or too late, putting my child at risk of diabetes?; Doodles took antibiotics for an ear infection and for suspected pink eye so we're already helping him on his way to developing drug-resistant infections; Doodles rolls over onto his stomach when he sleeps and what if the doctor is wrong about it being okay at this point?; we circumcised him so we scarred him for life; and vaccinations? Let's not even start on the vaccination debate. And now? Well, now I have to worry that TV is going to seep into my little Doodles brain and make everything a mess.

Of course, this is but the tip o' the iceberg. I worry about many, many more things. It was all on the paper I signed when I agreed to this motherhood thing. But the TV? Do I really need to stress out because we want (okay, Adam wants) the Red Sox on on a Sunday afternoon? Am I the only one out here who's worked up over this?

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