So I just read this article: Introducing Let's Move! and I found the screen time very interesting.
"Screen Time: No screen time for children under two years. For children age two and older, strive to limit screen time to no more than 30 minutes per week during child care, and work with parents and caregivers to ensure children have no more than 1-2 hours of quality screen time per day, the amount recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics."

I don't do any screen time but I found it interesting that they are pretty much encouraging parents to go ahead and use screen time at home up to 2 hours a day provided the parents find daycare that limits screen time to their allotted 1/2 per week! I wonder how many parents are going to start complaining to their provider about daily screen time now. I'm also curious what providers who do daily screen time have to say about this too.

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I say it is what it is. I use screen time. During naps and before lunch (not always, but sometimes and even daily at times). I use educational shows and I limit the amount--esp. for children under two. For one thing I hear it could give them seizures!?!?

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lol my niece watches about 10+ hours a day of TV... I need to copy think link and email it to her parents...

I don't have tv time here, but maybe once/twice week in the morning. It may be on a for a total of 20min each week if that.

During the raininy months I do allow for the kids to watch a moive from time to time. But its rare....

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my daughter is 2 and she watches tv off and on all day. She's a great talking, knows her alphabet, can count to 10, knows her shapes and colors. She answers the questions when asked on Dora and other shows. I only allow to watch educational shows such as Nick JR and PBS shows. Besides learning things from Dora (which can says 3 words in spanish!) we do flash cards everyday and other educational things.
Most of the time its background noise and she goes about and plays! I do eventually turn it off. But I don't think that tv is harmful UNLESS its used as a babysitting which is NOT what we do.

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I'll tell you what is coming so you guys can get prepared:

State by State TV and computers are going to be regulated in child care to the tune of NO screen time for any kid under the age of five. It will be in our regulations.

It's not difficult for centers to have no screen time for five and unders. The cost of providing fixed stable (non dangerous plugged in with no wires available) TV's, computers, internet, cable, dvd players etc. for every classroom is way too high. The cost of having staff who completely stop supervising and working whenever the TV is on because they WANT the kids to sit in one place and be entertained is too high.

There's no advantage to a center to have tv's for little ones. The school aged kids bring their own hand held screens so there is a HUGE advantage to allowing it for that age group. They are the hardest group to keep happy so allowing a lot of screen time for them will be the most profitable decision. It's not profitable in under fives because they don't bring their own and they can't keep their own away from other kids and breakage.

The centers aren't going to object to regs that say no TV for under fives. They are the ones with the money to fight regs like that. Home providers do not have the money to fight it so they will be the first to get targeted in regulations.

The regulations will be for "best interest of the baby" and the parents will be all for it. Parents want no TV because MOST BY FAR want their kid to watch tv on their clock. They want the peace and quiet that comes with a kid who hasn't been allowed TV all day long. It makes their TV usage SO much better if the kid hasn't had TV in day care.

All of these factors together are going to make regulating TV in home care super dooper easy to do. Once the research starts showing that obesity is affecting kids all the way down to infants then the rationale for no screen time will be right there to back up the regulations.

I think within the next five years we will see the regs go from "little to no screen time" to NO screen time. The DHS will be fielding calls from parents saying they KNOW the provider is allowing TV. Providers will get inspected based on screen time complaints. Eventually it will be considered neglect if TV is allowed in the day care setting.

Right now it is a gray area. Saying a provider can have ANY TV time.. even a half an hour a week.. means the TV CAN be on. That's what will change. They will have regulations saying there can be NO TV at all. NO computer time at all.... if they allow computers providers will have kids watch shows on the computer.

That's my prediction.

I think this campaign says a lot about how providers are viewed. I think society believes that we should do the right thing and be understanding that the parents simply can't. It is a rediculous notion that a child could have two hours of TV a day and that should not be done during the time of day the child is being cared for by someone who has five other kids.

If TV is acceptable then you would THINK the right time to do that is when the adult caring for the kid has five other kids... not when the kid is home with two adults caring for him/her or even one adult with one or two children of their own. Few parents have the ratio of adults to kids that we have. The screen usage should be when the adult to child ratio is low not high.

Saying that tv should be twelve minutes a day when in group care and it's understandable or ok for them to have two hours when they are home is rediculous. Either it's bad for them or it's not. Where they are during the day shouldn't affect their reccomendations.

Nobody wants to say NO TV completely because the advertisers WANT the kids to watch the commercials. This is what gets kids to ask for parents to buy stuff and to want to buy stuff when they have their own money. There's no other real way to get to little kids pocket book wise without having them watch the advertising on TV.

Either way.. it doesn't matter. Parents are NOT going to stop using TV period. It aint gonna happen no matter if Jesus himself comes down and tells the world to stop doing it. Kids are going to watch thousands of hours of TV while they are drinking tumblers of chocolate milk and eating bags of cheetos with or without the sanction of the government.

The ONLY way to guarantee no TV time for a kid is to regulate us. That's why we are next. This reccomendation will turn to regulation in the very near future.

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That really is sad. Eventually us "HOME DAYCARES" will have no personal choices for our personal childcare. That is really frusterating! Eventually we will probably be required to have cameras in our homes, our home will no longer be our home.

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When I see ads posted by parents looking for home child care for children over 2 in my area, about 50% of them make some sort of comment about TV in their ad. Such as, We don't want someone who will make our kid sit on the couch and watch TV all day. (Although, sometimes it's the opposite. Like, We don't want a sitter that's going to sit on the couch all day and watch TV.)

I don't like providers being viewed that way. I now see it getting worse.

I never reply to those ads. Not because we watch TV here, but because I don't like the attitude.

I actually haven't decided, yet, if we will ever watch TV here. We will have pajama/movie days once in a while in the winter.

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We physically removed out TV around the beginning of the school year last fall. (we also removed anything with batteries and automated actions) I do not think it is so wrong for kids to watch TV (good programming of course) and my own kids watched TV when they were young. However, I do want to say that since we have gone "Zero TV Time" at daycare, I am continually amazed at how differently the children behave/play.

They play with toys that used be be overlooked and under used, they play imaginative and creative pretend games that they didn't before (NONE of these pretend games include TV characters either) and they play in groups and pairs that they wouldn't have done before. It is strange but kinda cool.

It seemed before that the kiddos would pair up with ohters who watched the same shows; like if you loved Dora, you played together or if Spiderman was your favorite then you migrated toward the other little boy who loved Spidey too....but now, they are a really nice cohesive group and I have no idea if it is directly related to the TV removal or not but I am loving the change.

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As for the plate itself. Well I think it's a bunch of tip toeing around the truth.

THIS ISN'T THAT COMPLICATED

Cook
Eat half the plate in fresh veggies.. .second best is frozen
Eat whole grains
Eat plants
Eat local
Eat single ingredient foods
Don't eat processed foods
Don't buy any food you have ever seen advertised.


The "Let's Move" idea is to placate Big Ag. Doesn't it make more sense to talk about what we EAT FIRST? We can worry about exercise and screen time after we get the food figured out. There's too much implication within this campaign that there isn't really basic simple ways to avoid foods that are bad for you and whatever you DO eat should be burnt off by "let's move".

Let's eat right then let's move.

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In our state we already have our tv time limited. We also have to be able to show what our schedule is for the day as far as what we do with the children. We have to have some type of learning activity everyday for them.

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parents LOVE all these regulations we are under because they know that we feed them healthy, play outside , and don't have the t.v. on .
So when they get home with them they can plop them in front of the t.v. with their chicken nuggets and have their 30 minute "family time" and then put them to bed guilt free because they know we did all the awesome meals and activities with them all day

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I've always felt the opposite actually. I find the tv much more appealing when I have one vs more than one. One kid is constantly looking for attention from me because I'm the only other living talking thing in sight. More than one kid can interact with all the other kids and I have time to cook, clean, weed, etc. without being bombarded by questions for reading books, helping with puzzles, etc. I still never use the tv even if I only have one for the day. The one is still asked to go play sometimes but for the most part I'm just patient and answer thousands of questions during the day. If I were to ever have my own kids they too would be denied tv until they were in school. What I find ridiculous is that there is this push to eliminate tv from daycares which is not going to mesh with everyone's individual personalities.

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We are a center and we allow them to watch a small amount of tv. But its WHAT you watch that matters, IMO.
We have ZERO screen time that involves the dreadful, awful commercials. PBS mostly. But we use our satellite service occasionally for other stuff too! Sometimes, we see what's happening in space on the NASA channel (space theme week). Sometimes we look at the maps on the Weather Channel. (Weather theme week) Sometimes an animal show. (Wild animal theme week) Heck, they were interested in a travel show about China once! We listen to commercial-free music channels often, mostly classical, jazz, "new age", but sometimes we have a dance party! There are zero images while the music channels are on. But always, always, always NO commercials. But when the TV is on an actual program, not music, we make it a point to actively watch WITH them: field questions, ask them questions about the program, and try to turn whatever we watch into a learning experience.

Flip side: I constantly hear "I watch Power Rangers! I watch spongebob, I watch disney channel, I saw Kung Fu Panda, I saw Avatar" (?!?!?!). (We have one girl who just looks puzzled and says "I watch Brian Williams" no screen time there @ home. LOL!!!) And they all know about the latest toys and candy products, except for Brian Williams girl, so I know the parental units are not carefully editing out the commercials like we do. Likely not limiting at all. One kid even said he watches "I Carly" because mommy just leaves it on that channel all the time. Ugh.

We go with the ECERS guidelines: limited, meaningful when it is used, age appropriate, alternatives to TV offered to those not interested.

NannyDe: you really nailed it when you addressed the whole topic of state regulations of TV @ daycare! This would effect providers, but most certainly won't effect parents! No state would dream of attempting to regulate TV at home! Could you imagine the calls to DCF if watching too much tv at HOME was considered "neglecting?"

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