When to get a little one on skates

[NuggyBuggy 0]

No pushing, just have NHL games on all the time. I do that anyway.

Do your kid a favor, and turn the TV off. There are studies out there on the ill-effects that even background TV has on a child's attention span.

My wife and I were complete couch potatoes before we had our kids, but were determined that we didn't want our kids growing up to be the TV-dependent zombies that so many of my friends had. Now, the TV is never on unless we let them watch a few minutes of a nature DVD before they go to bed.

My kid simply wants to play hockey because he knew I was playing it, but he doesn't know what it really involves yet. He and his brother are going to start skating classes in a month (he is 3, his brother 20-months). Will they want to play it after they figure out what it's all about ? Will they start crying and hate being on the ice ? Who knows, I really hope they come to love it, but I'm going to give them the opportunity to let them figure out what they like. So they're going to be playing other sports, and they're going to get enrolled in music or art classes as well. We are planning to make a rule that each kid has to be enrolled in one sport and one other activity at any given time.

[scharf123 0]

I started when i was 3 :P

[Jordan 13]

Still hoping she does not decide on figure skating...

I have a son in rep hockey and a daughter in competitive figure skating...all I can say is that the coaching bills in figure skating make rep hockey look like a bargain !!!!

[Aussie Joe 0]

No pushing, just have NHL games on all the time. I do that anyway.

Do your kid a favor, and turn the TV off. There are studies out there on the ill-effects that even background TV has on a child's attention span.

Those "studies" are completely off track. I just read an interview by a doc in Ohio that completed a study last year on children's learning and development with things such as TV and the internet. They discovered that kids that watch more then 1hr of TV a day (consecutive or accumlative) become accustomed to receiving information at such a high rate, when they are required to sit and concentrate in a classroom (ie: sit and learn from a much slower method) they become restless/unable to cope. They likened this effect to taking a child from their current class level and dropping the 2-4 levels down for the hell of it.

Kid's minds are extremely flexible and will adjust to most changes, but they are now using the results from the study in a project with a school that has kids with learning difficulties. They beleive these kids find it hard to adjust to slower methods and beleive upping the anti not lowering it will help these kids improve their results.

I found the results interesting and also logical when I look back and think of the instance in Primary school where I was mis-diagnosed with ADD.

[NuggyBuggy 0]

Those "studies" are completely off track. I just read an interview by a doc in Ohio that completed a study last year on children's learning and development with things such as TV and the internet. They discovered that kids that watch more then 1hr of TV a day (consecutive or accumlative) become accustomed to receiving information at such a high rate, when they are required to sit and concentrate in a classroom (ie: sit and learn from a much slower method) they become restless/unable to cope. They likened this effect to taking a child from their current class level and dropping the 2-4 levels down for the hell of it.

Kid's minds are extremely flexible and will adjust to most changes, but they are now using the results from the study in a project with a school that has kids with learning difficulties. They beleive these kids find it hard to adjust to slower methods and beleive upping the anti not lowering it will help these kids improve their results.

So you think that bombarding a kid with Barney, Backyardigans, and reruns of Jeopardy is going to actually *accelerate* some part of a kid's cognitive development ? I was trained as a psychologist, and find that completely laughable. If a study comes out that shows professional overachievers grew up watching more TV as children than other children, I will be the first one running out to buy a TV for my kid's room.

But if the day ever comes when people prescribe television watching as a method to increase intellectual performance or even information processing skills, I will eat my hat. Ever seen a kid who watches a lot of Teletubbies or Backyardigans ? They usually look like zombies when those shows are on. My older nieces look the same way when their programs are on. There are far better ways for kids to spend their time than watching TV or playing their Xbox.

There were other, older studies that showed you could switch the soundtrack between two different cartoons, and the kids would not even notice a difference. What kind of meaningful information could possibly be getting into their heads that way ? What could they possibly be learning ?

[Aussie Joe 0]

Obviously there's a limit to how much the kid should watch etc. For example, you cannot sit a kid down and expect them to read for hours on end, they need a break from everything, a balance in other words. Smart parents ration their kids TV time, but it was more a study on how these two modern inventions have effected children's minds and abilities to learn.

As a Psychologist you should know theories and understanding changes all the time, its not a matter of saying one is black and the other is white, but that they all offer insights into the workings of the mind. That's from my sister by the way, the one and only Doctor of Psychology in my family. ;)