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Monday, March 3, 2008
No TV in the bedroom!
Finally! A recent New York Times story that vindicates a stance my Hubby and I have been advocating for years:
Kids are healthier when there is no TV in bedroom
Here’s one simple way to keep your children healthy: Ban the bedroom TV.
By some estimates, half of American children have a television in their bedroom; one study of third-graders put the number at 70 percent. A growing body of research shows strong associations between TV in the bedroom and health and educational problems.
Children with bedroom TVs score lower on school tests and are more likely to have sleep problems. Having a television in the bedroom is associated with being overweight.
One of the consequences is that the child will end up watching far more television. In a study of 80 children in Buffalo, N.Y., ages 4 to 7, the presence of a television in the bedroom increased average viewing time by nearly nine hours a week, to 30 hours from 21.
Although all the children in the study gained weight as they grew, relative body mass index dropped among those with mandatory time limits. The researchers found that cutting into TV time did not increase exercise levels. Instead, the children snacked less, lowering their consumption more than 100 calories a day. The study did not break down the data by bedroom television viewing.
