Be cautious about excessive screen time

The Little Lounge Coffee Corner - General Chat
1

Hi

I just received this post from TeachYourBabyToRead yahoo groups in my inbox. Thought to share with others.

Posted by: “Liang An Fan”
Wed Sep 29, 2010 10:04 pm (PDT)

Hi Every one,

I would like to share my experince again. My daughter is reaching 8
years old and my son is 4 and half now. My daughter is in P2, She
loves to read so much and now is near-sighted, so I joined the i_see
yahoo group, to try anything I can to restore her eyesight without
wearing glasses. Too much educational DVDs and computer games contribute
a lot too. Since she was 6, she created many email accounts. I found
out that she is her own parent and many other classmates and friends’
parent on the web so that she can approval herself and her other kids’
request to join certain groups and play certain games. This is my fault.
Since she coped well at school and I had no worries on all subjects at
all, I just let her do whatever she liked. I even paid monthly fee by
credit card to let her play online games and in the end I could not
cancel her membership anyway, no matter on line, or calling the hotline
at 3AM, thanks to my alarm clock, I have to say , in the end I canceled
my credit card instead. See how stupid I am!

So I would like to “warn” members here to take care of your babys’ eyes
while teaching them to read, and keep your eyes open what your kids do
on the computer.

Learning is no headache to both kids. They just love to read and learn.
My son always want to do his sister’s homework, whenever he gets chance
to grab the worksheets, No matter Chinese, English or Maths. He will
fill in whatever he knows! He can tell time, read simple Chinese and
English books and know times tables and write lots of Chinese and
English words or sentecses since 3 and half. He still has perfect
eyesight now.

Anyway, I still say educational DVDs or VCDs are very good resouces for
kids. My kids benefits a lot from them. They watched Rock and Learn
phonics, telling time, Multipaltion Rap, Divistion Rap, etc.
Helpme2learn computer games are very usefull too.

But please remember eyesight is very important, they can play computer
games or watch DVDs, but at controlled short time.

Best regards,
Anfan

2

wow…This is crazy! I have never heard something like this…
I think tv and computer should be restricted for kids and teens.
My daughter watches 20 minutes a day of tv…and some days she doesn’t watch tv at all…she wouldn’t even ask for it. We as parents have the obligation to put the rules in the house.
Thank you for sharing.

3

Currently my son is spending a little over an hour of TV/computer time. From now on I have to cut down this and have some days without screening.

4

If your 6 year old is online creating random email accounts, acting as a ringleader to do the same for her friends, and forces you to resort to cancelling your credit card just to cancel a game subscription…you have bigger problems than excessive screen time. The excessive screen time is the symptom of parental negligence and a failure to regulate and protect the child, and apparently instill a healthy respect for authority as well. If you cannot parent a child at 6, I would hate to imagine the situation at 16.

The fact that her kids need glasses are the least of her problems.

5

No child should have unguided and unchecked access to the internet and certainly shouldn’t have access to your credit cards.

When children are smart it can be easy to think they can handle things.

But they are not wise. They are not worldly. They are not experienced. And they most definitely are not adults and should never be treated as such.

The internet can be as dangerous a place as the rest of the world. Protect your little one and her friends from herself. At the moment it’s innocent online games, as far as you know, when does it move to innocent chat room? Remember you never know who is in those games with your children who is in contact with them. We should be more scared of letting our kids roam the internet world as we are with the natural world there are just as many threats there albeit of a different nature.

It is scary to me to think not only have you let your daughter roam the net world unattended but your little girl’s friends’ parents have done the same as well. Too many of us are too complacent when it comes to protecting our children.

I hope you have alerted your daughter’s friends’ parents to the little scheme they had going because they are obviously smart enough to work around their care givers once - they’ll at least try it once again.

I would be more concerned about the excessive freedom your daughter has, her obvious disregard for the rules and her ringleading than about the screen time.

I hope you manage to get this under control before the hormones hit (and they hit earlier than you might think!) :wub:

PS there are exercises to improve eyesight and correct muscle weakness in the eye. You can google them easy enough. I’d be inclined to give them a go. My sister and I were prescribed glasses at the same time. She wore hers and just kept getting thicker prescriptions. I never wore mine and did exercises instead and my eyesight has not degraded and is in fact better. Though they don’t always work as it depends on the problem it’s worth investigating.