The more you do it the more efficient you get. You lift a weight enough times and voila you are able to lift a bigger weight. If you read enough, you are able to read faster and comprehend more. I bring this up because I think that the youth of today are losing out on valuable reading practice. With the internet so easy to access and information at our children's fingertips, why would we not give them all of the advantages that we can. Anyone who can read can learn just about anything online.
So why are so many kids sitting in front of a Television instead of a book. Spongebob is not going to prepare that child to learn in any shape or form. The wiggles, while they can get your little ones to sing annoying songs all day, will not give you child any useful skills once they are beyond the staring at a mobile in the crib stage. I am surprised by the number of parents who do not realize that their children are losing valuable potential. My Mother read to my brother and I from birth. I personally thank her and attribute this to my high reading ability. This elevated skill in reading gives me an advantage when I given given a task that involves learning something new as I am able to read a manual or similar documentation and understand.
I am not saying that a child who watches TV will not be able to learn at the same rate as I can, I am merely saying that a child who misses out of reading at a young age is working harder to catch up later in life. What the child is watching is a definate factor. As a parent have you ever watched the shows that you allow your children to spend their afternoon watching. I am fairly comfortable saying that I feel as if I have lost a few IQ points if I watch even a few minutes of Ed, Edd, and Eddie. The Rugrats are so cute and have real life issues sometimes, but they do not speak proper English. To a teen this may be funny, but to a child who is just learning to speak, this makes more work later in retraining them from mistakes that they pick up from the television. I find it humerous that my wife and I correct the television all of the time.
Yes we do let our children watch Television, mostly in the form of Veggie Tales, Blue's Clues, and older movies like Mary Poppins and the like. If one of the Veggie's says something not quite proper, usually to rhyme in a song, we will casually say that is sily he should have said Larry and I, but I doesn't rhyme with see. I suppose the mere fact that we usually watch the TV with our children and rarely let them watch it as a baby sitter, is very important here as well. To be honest if we are having company or need some time sans kids, we would most likely put in one of the shows that we know is not going to confuse them, or a Star Wars movie. 
As an added bonus, this saves us money by not having to have the latest fad craze toys or apparel for our children. I own Star Wars toys from my youth, that recycle quite nicely. my son likes pirates and dinosaurs. A dinosaur toy is cheaper than a Barney the annoying purple dinosaur toy any day of the week. I got a cowboy hat, folded it up into a tricorner hat and wham instant pirate hat. Add wooden swords from renfest and my kids are pirates. They run around the house yelling arrrr and aye, call me Captain Daddy, and use their imagination. Much cheaper than having to buy Power Rangers toys or the talking pull the string and we can sing annoying songs Wiggles figures.
I buy a shirt that has a pirate flag on it from online store for half the cost of a spongebob shirt. I got a huge pirate flag that is mounted on my Son's wall for $10 with his birthday money. Do you know how much even a poster of the wiggles would cost let alone a 3 foot by 5 foot cloth flag? In addition to this, by not having to watch actual television programs, my children are not bombarded by advertisements. Imagine being able to sit down and talk to your son about a book that he has just read instead of what Spongebob and that silly starfish did. If he has a question it is usually something tangible that we can look up. He reads about dinosaurs and wants to know how big a Tyranosaurus tooth was, we can go online and check. If he wanted to know why some cartoon character did something on a TV show the answer would simply be 'because that is what the artists drew.' No learning there.
Reading is like working out
May 22nd, 2006 at 02:41 pm
May 22nd, 2006 at 05:00 pm 1148317259
May 23rd, 2006 at 12:53 am 1148345586
May 23rd, 2006 at 04:12 am 1148357576
But I do think that the Wiggles does teach kids more than useless rhymes and annoying songs. It gives them a joy of music and teaches them to get up and move. My kids and I think nothing of bursting into song as we go about our days. My kids and I have used it like aerobics, we do all the dances and moves to it. It is very important for kids to get up and use their bodies in this age of childhood diabetes and obesity. Especially if they are voracious readers. And its raining out. And they have cabin fever.
I can't count the number of times I got horrible aches in my neck and shoulders from reading too long without moving. If I had known to get up and "shake it all about" from time to time, I could have avoided that. My daughter loves to read, but she makes sure to take moving breaks, something she learned at 5 from watching Wiggles. When she forgets, she gets bad cricks in her neck. My son is learning to read now and he likes it better than TV already.
I can get a Wiggles poster at a garage sale for 25 cents, by the way, but it would still be a waste of a quarter. I'd rather pay 50 cents and get the video instead.
May 23rd, 2006 at 10:23 pm 1148423007
And I love the speed which I read (though as a kid I thought it was sloooow, cause mom and big bro were WAY faster