I volunteer every week in both my third and first grader's classes. It's a public school; our G/T program doesn't start until 4th grade.
Some of the kids read below grade level in the class. Inevitably, the teacher has me work with those kids. In chatting with these kids, it seems like they watch ALOT of TV and have unfettered access to their Wii, XBOX, whatever. I mean, they have a TV in their room, and some watch it until midnight when they are "supposed to be asleep."
Are they below grade level b/c of their heavy video/computer use? Or is it b/c English isn't their first language, or their parents aren't educated, or... a million other reasons.
Obviously, I don't know. It could be an epiphenomenon, but I suspect that all of their TV/video usage isn't helpful.
While we don't impose set limits as I mentioned earlier, dh and I have agreed dd will not have access to screens in her room until she's, well, an adult (that's the plan at least). I suspect as well, a general attitude to screen time as not particularly valuable in our house contributes to us not needing to put limits on dd. Dh and I don't watch TV while she's around and while I use my ipad a bit, it's generally for reading newspapers and magazines (and she's aware that's what I'm doing). We have a wii, playstation, iphones, ipad and two computers but we rarely use any them for anything 'fun'(the fact that we have all those things despite not really using them, is of course an issue for another day!) We got a DS for dd for this Christmas, however she announced the other day she'd rather a Hogwarts Lego set... unfortunate given the DS and games are already purchased and the Lego costs close to the same amount as the DS here!
I have a friend whose little girl is almost always staring at a screen - to the point where she's not even realised I'm there. That's too much screen time... if dd valued screens we'd be setting limits WAY before it reached that point!
