Why Boys are Behind at School
Studies by Dimetri Christakis at the Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle have determined that the brain need touch, hearing, seeing, smelling, and tasting stimulus to grow fully.
Now consider the following facts about the youth of today.
The average child spends 900 hours a year in school and 1,023 hours a year watching television. In the average home, the TV is on 6.7 hours per day. By the time a boy reaches eighteen years of age, he’ll have spent 22,000 hours watching television. That is more than any other activity besides sleeping. The number of videos and DVDs families rent every day is twice the number of books read. By the age of sixteen, the average boy will have seen 200,000 acts of violence on television, 33,000 of them acts of murder. One fourth of children under two years of age have a television in their bedrooms. Two thirds of preschool boys sit in front of screens for more than two hours per day. That is more than 3 times the hours they spend looking at books or being read to.*
*Randy White. Children’s outdoor play and learning environments: returning to nature 2004
It seems there should be a direct and clear solution to this issue. But, after having spoken to any number of parents, I find this is not the case.
It seems children have forgotten how to play.
As odd as this may seem, I hear the same statement again and again. Parents tell me when the television is turned off the children have no idea how to occupy themselves and look to the parents to entertain them.
How did this come to pass? I remember in my own childhood spending the majority of my time in rough and tumble games outside until forced in by darkness. Now, I find that children are completely unacquainted with their own next door neighbors.
Parents are understandably exhausted after 10 and 12 hour work days and are unable to entertain the children.
What solutions or suggestions have you found for this bizarre and escalating phenomenon?
Reg Adkins writes on behavior and the human experience at (elementaltruths.blogspot.com).
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Comments
pete says on September 7th, 2006 at 8:48 am
It is because they do not know how to occupy themselves. Sitting in front of the TV is a very passive activity. Your brain doesn’t function the same. They never learn how to play on their own. It also retards their imagination.
I have a friend who had the same problem, she played with her child too much (not allowing her to play alone much). As a result her little girl had a very hard time entertaining herself, and always wanted her parents to play with her.
There has to be a balance. A tv in the room isn’t it.
We put the TV in the garage. Havn’t used it since and don’t miss it. Only occasionally will we watch a DVD on the computer.
fm says on September 7th, 2006 at 9:22 am
There’s no such thing as a direct and clear solution when the parental mentality is involved. Exhausted after a 12 hour workday? Cry me a freaking river. “Do you have children?” only proves the point.
dan says on September 7th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Seems like someone needs to check their stats.
Over all tv watching by a 16/18yr old, every minute there is over 1 murder/hour . . . right. There aren’t that many in the average murder mystery.
200,000 acts of violence? Thats once ever 6 minutes and includes watching tv from maybe 2yrs old? Blue Peter? Sesame Street? Violence? No.
1 in 4 with a tv in their room - this is progress. people also learn from tv too. How do people get into passions, hobbeys and such. Its a great place to explore the world, and widely used in schooling.
TV may be on 6.7hr a day, but is it being watched? Doubtful.
Robert says on September 7th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Like fm said, there’s no solution available unless the invididual parents make up their minds to make active play a priority in their kids’ lives. At some point — the earlier the better — parents have to teach their kids the value of active play and MODEL that value in their own lives by taking their kids to playgrounds, to the play area in the mall, by running around the house, or whatever. But it will not happen if the parents themselves aren’t committed.
For our part, my wife and I have made playtime an essential component of any time we spend with our daughter. We make evening outings to the park or the play areas in the mall and library regular occurences, and we make sure to play *with* our daughter when we go, to allow her to model our behavior and reinforce her own. Now she wants to go to the playground all the time and throws a screaming hissy fit if we don’t feel like it! But put her in front of a TV and she’s bored stiff within minutes. And we like it that way.
But parents have to get it done — and actually PARENT.
Reg Adkins says on September 7th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Dan,
I know the numbers are disturbing. But, they come from the published works of Dr. Christakis, and Dr. White. They are independent of each other and work in differents fields.
Ken Fehling says on September 7th, 2006 at 11:37 am
Why boys? Why doesn’t this stuff apply to children in general?
Reg Adkins says on September 7th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Ken,
You are correct the impact is felt by girls as well. But, because of the heavy reliance of the mail brain on physical activities related to learning it is even more related to boys.
steve says on September 7th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
I believe a lot has to do with the priorities of the parents, and with creating an active environment for the kids. My boys are aged 10 and 7.
In our life, our priorities are very child focused. So we don’t entertain as much as we did when we were childless, and the house is usually pretty messy. A spotless living room is not a priority. The house can be very noisy as well.
Things we have done:
Limit the amount of “screen time” that our children receive. This includes television, computers, video games, and handhelds. The rule in the house is that they can play the game boys in the car, and have to ask to use anything else. Our children get maybe 4 or 5 hours of screen time a week, (outside of the game boys in the car). My wife and I watch TV after the children have gone to bed.
Provide and engage in activities with the children, such as creating crafts (Perler beads, Sculpey, drawings, etc), playing age appropriate card games (Uno is a big hit, so is Apples to Apples), playing board games (currently the fave is Sorry). Both boys are great builders, so Legos seem to migrate into every room in the house. The back patio often has strange maps and spy notes written on it in sidewalk chalk.
Books and reading: Since the children were born, we read to them every night. The ten year old reads every night himself now, and the 7 year old reads to himself 3 or 4 nights a week. Trips to the library are frequent. Since we often return books overdue, I say the library is my favorite rental place. The ten year old reads three to 4 chapter books a week, and the seven year old about one chapter book a week
Sports: Neither boy is very athletic, but both participate in soccer in the fall, one participates in soccer in the spring, and the other baseball. This also helps at the lunchtime recess pick me up games.
Instruments: Both boys like to play instruments. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t push it, but would try to find some sort of artistic or humanistic enterprise to have them do.
Both boys like being Cub Scouts. Organized group activities are excellent to help children learn.
We have a trampoline, so that when they need to bounce, they can. Prior to this, it was kicking a ball, or chasing each other around the house (outside), or going to a playground to swing and spin.
The point is that for children to learn and play, they must be exposed to a variety of experiences, and the parents must be involved in providing these experiences.
Lastly, I believe that the lack of play among children is more a reflection of the parents than it is the children. Children will always find activities to do and ways to play if they are given opportunities to do so, and told that that is OK.
jonathan peterson says on September 7th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Steve has it right. Kids are inactive because parents find parking them in front of the TV easier than saying “go outside and play”. Also many parents have irrational fears of abduction, drugs, sexual predators, drunk drivers etc. that most won’t let their kids walk around the corner or ride their bike down the street to play with other kids.
Parents make “play dates” and ferry kids around or take them to organized sports/gymnastics/etc.
But most of it comes down to the American culture of cocooning - if the parents are parking in front of the TV and internet instead of hanging out with the neighbors, why would you expect the kids to do anything differently?
Ben says on September 7th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
I’ll second a lot of what Steve has posted. I have two boys, one just under 4 and the other halfway between 1 and 2. When I became a father I always planned on making sure that my children would have plenty of play opportunites. On the days off work, or on the weekends, that I look after them I use a children’s DVD as a distraction only when it’s time to get dinner ready. The rest of the day they will have spent playing with their toys and each other, and with myself on and off during the day. If the weather is nice I take them to one of the local parks. I also involve my oldest in the grocery shopping. I also read to both of them each night as part of their bedtime routine. It all comes down to the type of parent you want to be. And most of the time televsion programming is mind rotting crap anyway.
Dean Johnson says on September 8th, 2006 at 7:54 am
I think it more has to do with parents not parenting very well. You don’t have to look very far to find a parent that wants to be a friend of their child, rather than a parent. I’m all for having a friendly relationship with your children, but at some point you have to make the hard choices that cause your popularity to take a hit. Our 12 yr old boy could spent 24×7 playing video games, but we make sure that he does things other than that. For him, playing games is something that he gets to do when he is doing what he is supposed to. When he strays from what we consider his path (ie. school work, boy scouts, reading, writing), we “simplify” his life. What I call “Lifestyles of the Rich and Amish”. No TV, no computer, no video games. The only tv that he can watch is what we watch and he can only use his computer for homework, independent writing, and email. Sometimes he is simplified for weeks. He whines and mopes, but eventually settles into an alternate routine. The intention is to give him an opportunity to reapportion his mental bandwidth so that the correct path has enough to work correctly. Additionally, we simplify him for the first two weeks of school, which he is in right now, to allow him to get up to speed and on the right track with all his teachers.
We also provide for him many opportunities to find other passions. Sometimes he doesn’t want to go, and whines alot, but ends up loving it. When he finds a passion, such as writing or the sport of lacrosse, we help him extensively to embrace that passion.
Many years ago my stepmom said that he shouldn’t spend so much time in front of the tv or videogames because he will be stunted socially. I am happy to say that she was entirely wrong. Inspite of him being about as technically advanced as any kid his age, he is a totally extroverted and gregarious kid that makes friends at the drop of a hat and can talk (sometimes ad nauseum) on many topics. He got that way because we guided him and continue to guide him that way. “Hey, that kid is just sitting around, why don’t have ask if he would like to throw a ball around?” is something we do often.
Furthermore, kids are often idiots because their parents are idiots. I don’t discount the impact of peer pressure, but without parental pressure, peer pressure will fill the void.