With warmer weather here, I am going to put in my plug for giving our kids more play time.  Recent studies have shown that kids who get activity breaks at school and free time in their day to play and exercise actually do better in school.

Besides giving kids time to practice social skills with their peers, active exercise actually increases brain growth and development.  Exercise releases brain chemicals in key learning and memory centers of the brain which stimulate the growth of neural networks.  At a time when we are asking our kids to perform at peak levels in their school work, we should be giving them all the tools and support to help them succeed – exercise is key.  

Play and exercise are of course also key to fighting our current epidemic of overweight and obesity.  Helping kids build stronger, more active and fit bodies will only help them succeed at school.  I am heartened by the fact that I am seeing more and more families out exercising together.  Last night on a bike ride, our local bike path was as crowded as a freeway and many of the bikers were families out for a ride together and getting some good exercise to boot.   Even as simple an exercise as walking is healthy for kids.  But nothing beats kids just being able to play.  So if you have a backyard, playground, local gym, or open space – get your kids off the couch, away from the video screens and outside to move and play.

Workshop Alert. Once Say Yes to No community conversations started, people asked “What’s next?”   We are introducing, in six Minnesota workshop locations during 2009, Parenting with No, a 5-Step hands-on program.   Activity and discussion oriented, Parenting with No helps people practice strategies that work for when and how to say “no”, building the character traits of self-discipline, real self-esteem, and perseverance.  Character traits kids need to be successful in the 21st century.  Register online.

Dr. Dave

According to the Centers for Disease Control, motor vehicle crashes are responsible for more than one in three teen deaths, the leading cause of death for teens in the U.S.   In 2005, they recorded 12 teens died every day from injuries sustained in an accident.  Teens also have the lowest rate of seat belt use.

While speeding and alcohol are clearly lead factors, as I drive down the highway and streets, I can’t ignore the amount of cell phone use among young drivers.   In fact, more than half of teens reported using cell phones while driving.  Teens love their cell phones and report them essential to their social lives – keeping up with friends.  And what do teens love most about their cell phones?  According to a Harris Interactive Poll, teens love the fact that they can multitask.   And the fact that they can text without looking at the keypad, makes multitasking so much easier.

Teachers deal with this every day in their classroom, but mixing cell phones and driving can become dangerously or even deadly very quickly.  Talk with your teen and lay clear ground rules for cell phone use.  At the top of the list should be: No talking or texting on a cell phone while driving.  Make sure your teen knows the consequence  – If they break the rule: No cellphone.  It’s your teen’s life at stake.

What are your rules for teen’s cell phone use?

Dr. Dave

Hundreds of early elementary kids got a great lesson about violent media from some researchers from Oregon State University.  Understanding that kids who watch violent media will more likely copy violent behavior in their own lives, these researchers created an intervention –Reducing Early Violence: Education Works - which help kids choose less violent media.    After a series of 28 lessons over seven months,  the researchers found an 18% reduction in violent TV viewing in the first through fourth graders.

What made the difference to these kids?  How did they come to see violent TV as “junk food” TV and not healthy for them?  I’m going to bet part of the answer lies in the real people – the police officers and other students – who came in to talk to the kids.  The program was highly interactive with video clips set against real world experiences.  Our kids are hungry for real world experiences with adults who care.   If kids are not told or experience differently, the violence they see on screens is the real world to them and their brains will encode violence as the way to deal with problems.

Kids at this age have a specially attuned sense of fairness.  They want to do things that are healthy.  It’s a great time to teach them about junk TV and nutritious TV and challenge them to choose what best for their bodies and their brains.  Kids thrive when we connect to the real world, balancing their media use with other activities.  Giving kids tools to make healthy media choices puts them on a life-long healthy media track.

How do you deal with violent media with your kids?

Dr. Dave

I continue to get questions about the use of media with very young children. A parent recently relayed this story to me: she and her husband took their three month old baby to their pediatrician for a well baby check. The pediatrician gives them great MediaWise™ advice: no media for children under two years of age. The next day they got an ad in the mail for Baby Einstein DVDs. They remembered their pediatrician’s advice, but wouldn’t their child be learning and the videos looked so colorful and fun? What should they do?

Because media is so much a part of all our lives, it’s important to remember why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no media for children under two. The reasons, I tell parents, have to do with the amazing amount of growth going on in infants’ and toddlers’ brains and can be summarized in two ways: the impact of media itself on developing brains and what a child is not doing if they are watching TV.

A researcher at the University of Washington, Dmitri Kristakis, did a study which linked attention problems at school age to children’s early use of media when they were under 3. We know that only 17% of an infants’ brain is wired at birth, the rest wires in the days, months and years to follow. But the first three years of a child’s life see tremendous brain organization and growth, with a child’s brain making sense of everything they see, hear, touch, and smell. Watching TV can then take a child away from what he should be doing to help his brain get organized: playing – using his hands, experiencing language from his parent or caregiver, moving his body, and most of all taking in all sorts of information from all his senses, so that his brain can begin to understand and integrate all this information into networks, so that his world begins to make sense to him.

I believe that watching TV can set a child up to be attracted to and look to screens to be entertained. Not a helpful skill when he reaches school age and has to attend and focus to learn. High media use kids are at risk of feeling bored and distracted if they do not receive the same entertaining visual stimulus that media offers.

So what’s a parent to do? The parents of the three month old decided to follow their pediatrician’s MediaWise advice: No media for their child now and they will re-evaluate when she reaches age two. In this media age it’s best to keep babies learning and experiencing in the real world – they have a lot of learning to do.

Dr. Dave

I traveled outside of New York City last week, speaking to parent groups about Say Yes to No.  One question kept occurring that I have heard many times in other communities: “Is it ever too late?”

The question, of course, is: “Is it ever too late to start using NO with my teenager?  I didn’t do a good job setting limits and saying ‘no.’  I let him do pretty much what he wanted and now we’ve got some real problems on our hands.”

The answer is – it is never too late to use the principles of NO with your child.  Although it’s more difficult to start when your child is older, the principles are the same as with a two year old:

1.    Let your child know the expectations and limits ahead of time.
2.    Let your child know the consequences if they cross the limit or don’t meet the expectation.
3.    Consistently enforce the consequences.  “If you choose to…., then you are choosing the …”
4.    Avoid power struggles.  Remain calm.
5.    Don’t expect your child to like the consequences or you for enforcing them.  It’s their job to push against the limits.  It’s your job to set them.

Parenting is hard work at times, and especially with teens – it’s a delayed gratification occupation.  The lessons of NO will give your kids the gift of self discipline and persistence, two character traits that are key for success in the 21st century.

How do you avoid power struggles with your child?

Dr. Dave

Teens often act without thinking of the consequences and in the case of sexting, the latest twist on cyberbullying, this is certainly true.   Cell phones are seen by many parents as a safety tool and an easy way to keep tabs on their teen.   Teens certainly do call, but they have gravitated to text messaging in a big way.  Most phones also come with a camera option.  Marry a photo to texting  and you have the opportunity to cause real harm, and possibly break the law, if you send the wrong photo.  What is happening in a few cases, is that teens are taking pictures either of themselves or others, nude, and sending the photo to friends (sexting).

What teens don’t realize is that one push of the button and they lose control of that photo.  Anyone can do anything with content online.  The nude photo could be sent around the world in a minute.  Cases have been reported where girls text their nude photo to their boyfriends who then pass it on.   Embarrassment is just the start of the consequences. 

Parents need to talk to their teens about cell phone behavior, what’s OK and not OK to do.  Sexting nude photos of anyone is NOT Ok to do.  Make sure kids realize the damage that can happen to themselves, their own reputation, and the damage and hurt they can cause others if they see a photo and pass it on.  Parents should regularly check the pictures on their kids’ phones and have consequences ready if they find photos that can cause harm.   It’s not even too far-fetched to tell kids that they can easily be breaking pornography laws if they send or pass on such photos.   The consequences here are legal.

Pictures on the web stay there and can affect people far into the future.  Imagine the reaction of college entrance folks and potential employers who could easily run across these photos in their information survey on prospective applicants.  The bottom line is don’t send sexually explicit photos and don’t pass them on if you receive them.  

Schools have a big role to play.  Policies on bullying need to be upgraded to include cyberbullying.  Policies on cell phones are all over the map, with some schools outlawing cell phones in school and others allowing.  The policy on sexting should be clear, with tough consequences for anyone caught sending or passing a photo on.  Zero tolerance.

Parents and schools need to talk about the issue and the severe consequences to kids.

Check out our MediaWise Parent Guide on Cell Phones and Your Kids for more information and tips.

How do you talk to your kids about cell phones?

Dr. Dave

Watching more than two hours of television a day raises the risk of behavior problems in kids.  This sums up a report recently issued by researchers from Yale, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the California Pacific Medical Center .   The researchers looked at 173 studies on children and media and found a whole host of likely problems for kid ranging from obesity, tobacco, drug and alcohol use, poor school achievement, sexual behavior issues and attention problems.

TV is the most frequently used form of media by kids.  The hours add up quickly, especially when kids have TVs in their bedroom.  It’s often the first switch on in the morning and the last switch turned off at night.  When you add in after school watching, TV on during mealtimes, and a couple of shows before bedtime – it’s real easy to reach two hours and counting.  For families that have TV on as background noise – all the time – kids attention is never far from the screen.

The National Institute on Media and the Family supports parents who want to be MediaWise.   A healthy use of media means:

•    No TV in a child’s bedroom.
•    TV off during mealtimes.  Make mealtime family time.
•    Limit media use to no more than two hours a day for ages two and up.
•    Choose TV programs that are age appropriate for your child.
•    Turn the TV off as background noise.  If nobody’s watching – turn it off.
•    Watch videos instead of commercial programs.
•    Use TV as a babysitter, sparingly.

Watching a good TV program can be a fun family activity.  It’s the constant eyeballs on the screen that create the behavior problems that researchers found in the kids they studied and actually our teachers see when kids walk into their classrooms.   Parenting in the 21st century means being MediaWise.  Help your kids be the best they can be.

What do you do to be a MediaWise parent?

Dr. Dave

The National Institute on Media and the Family issued a press release last week alerting parents that the new Nintendo Wii game, MadWorld, was definitely not for kids and chastised Nintendo in the process. Our press release quickly circulated on the national wires triggering many reactions in the media and blogosphere, raising important issues.

Anyone who has followed our work knows that we are fans of video games because they can be good teaching tools. The question always is, “What are they teaching?” Since we think education and good parental oversight are the keys to video game supervision, we do our best to keep parents up to date with the information they need.

The Institute has praised the Nintendo Wii console repeatedly as a technological advance that makes playing games much more lifelike and realistic. In addition, Nintendo Wii has benefited handsomely from its reputation as the “family friendly” video game console. Therefore we became concerned when we began receiving emails from parents about an upcoming Wii game that had almost been banned in Europe because of its ultra violent content. The game, MadWorld, combines the life-like features of Wii technology to enable a player to decapitate, impale and torture victims not with the press of a button but with his own chain saw swinging actions.

Those who say that criticizing Nintendo for MadWorld is like criticizing Panasonic for making DVD players that can play adult rated DVDs don’t understand the business model behind video games. Nintendo Wii is the only console that plays MadWorld. Nintendo has licensed the game and therefore has a financial stake in its sales. It’s as if Disney World opened a theater on its grounds that showed slasher movies. While there are other M-rated Wii games, MadWorld is so notorious that it serves as a high profile alert to parents that Nintendo Wii is shedding its “family friendly” image. We have not been alone in highlighting the incongruence between Wii and the blood and gore of MadWorld. Even Wired magazine ran an article with the same theme. The takeaway for parents is to make sure they follow the ratings, even with Wii games.

Dr. Dave