Parenting — TV and Pop Culture

• The Unreality of Pop Media

  Today’s media has done a masterful job of providing people with an illusion of reality. Much of the media culture is designed to create a mythical perspective, rather than depicting real life experience. Now you can vicariously live through someone else’s orientation in the comfort of your own home.

• How To Manage Our Hard-Wired Youth

  A friend of mine who is a high school English teacher in our local schools has been perplexed by the behavior of some of her current students. She said, “Help me understand why a third of my students can’t sit still in their desks? They wiggle, they squirm, they tap their pencils and their feet and are constantly in motion.” She is experiencing a dose of today’s “hard-wired” youngsters.

• TV Ads Market Junk Food To Kids

  For young Americans, the “food landscape” in television advertising is packed with junk food, according to a new study. The study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the first to explore the nutritional composition of foods advertised to children using Nutrition Facts labeling.

• The Stranger In Your Child’s Life

  Would you let a stranger spend several hours with your child, communicating values, distracting them from homework, creating separation and distance from family? Even worse, would you let a stranger into your child’s bedroom?

• No TV

  Dear Mr. Dad: Help! My kids are hopeless television addicts. All they want to do is sit in front of the tube-even on the most gorgeous days. What can I do to break this habit?

• Toddlers, TV, And Attention Problems

  Millions of kids under the age of two are watching TV in this country. In fact, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation of over 1,000 parents, about 65% of kids under age two are watching TV, and they’re averaging over two hours of watching a day.

• Fighting The TV Culture

  TV is not evil. There are wonderful programs for both adults and kids. And there is a tremendous amount of garbage. One of the most important things you can do as a parent is to set limits on TV watching (and video game playing) while your kids are young. If these limits aren’t set early, kids will tend to gravitate towards the garbage that’s on the tube, and they’ll spend precious time that could be spent more productively.

• Pediatricians Zap Media

  Saying that television viewing can affect the mental, social and physical health of young people, the academy for the first time has laid out a plan for how pediatricians and parents can deal with television