TV and Children's Language Development

This article was forwarded to me by Gwen Harper, the school counselor at Westwood Elementary School.  It is about a year old, but I had not heard of it before and thought it was pretty interesting! The research project found that when a parent and child are in a room with a TV on, they speak to each other far less than when the TV is off. According to the study, adults normally speak about 941 words per hour when the TV is off. For every hour in front of the TV, parents spoke about 770 fewer words to children, or 171 words per hour. That is only about 18% of the "normal" level of parent-child conversation! Children talked less with the TV on too. (Ha ha ha, I'm sure several of us are thinking that this part of the research may be helpful when we want to quiet talkative children down! :))

The researcher says that we might not realize how little we truly interact with our children when we're in front of the TV. "A mother may think she's engaged with a baby because they're both on the floor playing blocks. But if a TV is on in the background, the two of them talk much less," he says.

It looks to me like the study focused on whether television hurts children's language development, but I wonder also about the implications for the connection and nurturing between parents and children, and children's critical thinking about the concepts and advertisements they're exposed to on TV.  If the TV is on, our quality time with children may not be as "quality" as we think! 

The study did not mention any data for conversations between adults when a TV is on, but it sure made me think about how TV might impact the relationship between my husband and I as well. Good thing college football season only comes once a year... it would be difficult for many of us to cut back on TV during those special few months around here! :)