t.v. turn off week

Jan.28-Feb.3, 2008
I took Isaac to the dentist this Wednesday and I was really worried that they were going to tell me his mouth was full of cavities, but luckily they said his teeth were fine. They did, however, have to clean the plaque build up off of his teeth with a whirring brush and a metal pick and I definitely had to physically hold Isaac down so that they could do that. Luckily my friend Luz watched Levi for me at her house because I really couldn’t have handled both of them at the dentist.
Levi is coming out of his influenza doldrums into a full speed bouncy crazy toddler again.
I put the t.v. in the closet this week because I felt like the boys were becoming too obsessed with it and I was constantly having to be the t.v. police. It also created contention because when Isaac was watching something and Levi got in the way he would push him down. I thought about bringing the t.v. back on a limited basis, but then I read this article about how

“TV watching "rewires" an infant’s brain, says Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis lead researcher and director of the Child Health Institute at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle, Wash. The damage shows up at age 7 when children have difficulty paying attention in school. "In contrast to the way real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, the pace of TV is greatly sped up." says Christakis. His research appears in the April 2004 issue of Pediatrics. Quick scene shifts of video images become "normal," to a baby "when in fact, it’s decidedly not normal or natural." Christakis says. Exposing a baby’s developing brain to videos may overstimulate it, causing permanent changes in developing neural pathways. Are parents who use infant videos such as "Baby Einstein" and "Teletubbies" putting their child at risk for a lifetime of Special Ed classes, school "behavioral therapy" and Ritalin? In the study of more than 2,000 children, Christakis found that for every hour watched at age one and age three, the children had almost a ten percent higher chance of developing attention problems that could be diagnosed as ADHD by age 7. A toddler watching three hours of infant television daily had nearly a 30 percent higher chance of having attention problems in school. "

Yeah. So basically I’m feeling pretty anti-t.v. for the little ones right now. It’s actually kind of liberating. The kids have both been a lot more self entertained this week and we’ve spent more quality time together that would have been robbed by t.v. time. And its not like they watched a ton of t.v. before, but it was kind of like candy sitting out there in the middle of the living room just waiting to be tasted. Now that the temptation is not sitting right there in front of them, they’ve been better about finding other things to do. Isaac asks to go outside more and he has really taken off with imagination games. At the park this week we started pretending that he was the map and I was the backpack and his friend Grace was Dora. I was also sometimes Swiper the fox and I hid him behind a tree for “Dora” to find. He thought that this was hilarious. Isaac also loves pretending to be Richie and Tito the firefighter—a story we got at the library. He absolutely loves the idea of pretending that the pole at the park is a fireman’s pole and wants to go up and down. Levi also digs the pole and likes it when I lift him up and down with sound effects.
We did Spanish story time over at my friend Luz’s house and it was a lot of fun. The kids love playing the maracas and dancing to the groovy tunes. I’m excited because we’re going to do the group this coming Friday and our house and there are a bunch of new moms that I’ve invited.
Levi can now say “moo” and “moon” When you ask him what a cow says, he’ll say moo, but he also thinks chickens, horses, dogs and zebras say moo too.
Levi has a new frustration sound—“deh deh!” he usually does that and tries to punch something when he’s frustrated.
Levi now carries around any chairs and stools that he can pick up and plants himself in front of kitchen drawers and cupboards and proceeds to make mischief.
Isaac is now saying “quiero” for “I want” instead of “quiere.”