For the last year, we’ve done our best to regulate Hazel’s television intake.  This has been difficult for all concerned, truly, as she loves the gogglebox so much it has become the easiest way of getting her to contently sit still for a while, if you need to get something done/have some time off.

Recently, I’ve found that my opinions have somewhat mollified. Two weeks ago, Hazel picked up a magnifying glass in my mother’s house and told her Nana exactly what it was.  Where did this knowledge come from? Myself and Ev have never had cause to go around repeating the term “Magnifying Glass” and I doubt they’re doing it at Hazel’s crèche either! It makes sense that television (CBeebies in the overwhelming majority) might well be the source.

Last Friday I chanced upon an article on the Guardian‘s website.  I’ll reproduce some extracts from it here but I’d encourage you to click on the link above and check it out in its entirety if you’re interested.

In it Desmond Morris, the famous zoologist and author of The Naked Ape, argues that parents needn’t feel so guilty about letting their children watch TV.

Television, he claims, can be better for preschool children than books, and parents who believe otherwise are guilty of cultural snobbery. “If parents favour book-reading over watching a film, they’re making a mistake,” said Morris, whose new book, Child, to be published on Tuesday, looks at the development of the preschool toddler. “It’s unjustifiable cultural snobbery.”

“Reading to your child from a book only gives verbal input,” he added. “If it has a good script, musical input and uses creative visuals, a good feature film provides three media for imagery. Films can be better than books. It’s simply wrong to claim otherwise.”

This resonates with my current opinion on the subject. Perhaps television (featuring the right kinds of programmes, of course) is a useful tool for kick-starting a child’s education?

Contrary to recent research, Morris insists, feature films can enhance a child’s long-term concentration and finesse complex cognitive skills.

“The attention span of a young child is said to be only about three to five minutes. But a four-year-old may watch a film for over two hours without once taking her eyes off the screen,” he said.

I am a bit more sceptical about this. For a start, we’re told his idea are “contrary to recent research”. Has he done his own research? Even more important, I think, is the inactivity.  Surely a toddler sitting still for that length of time will have some sort of negative effect on their own health?

Interestingly, the journalist, in filling out the article, also sidesteps into another issue that is currently focusing our minds: Hazel’s need for interaction with other toddlers.

Morris also made the contentious claim that nursery schools are more natural environments for preschool children than staying at home with a full-time parent. “In tribal societies village children all run around together,” he said. “That’s the natural way. So mothers who go out to work should not feel guilty because they’re doing the natural thing – as long as they’re not too tired to play with their children when they come home.”

Leaving aside the reference to “mothers” (tut tut), as my previous post explained, this is also an opinion we now share.

There is, however, a dissenting opinion.

Psychologist Aric Sigman, who has called the hours spent in front of TVs “the greatest unacknowledged health scandal of our time”, questioned Morris’s authority for his claims about television. “Desmond Morris is an anthropologist, not a biologist,” he said. “The truth is that a child’s rapidly developing brain needs to be primed through experiences that place plenty of cognitive demands on it.”

This sounds perfectly sensible too. Of course, no-one (I hope) is going to advocate leaving their child in front of the TV for the whole day.

“The greatest … health scandal of our time”?  Everything in moderation…