A study published earlier this year in Infant Behavior and Development adds to existing research that suggests letting your child watch television at bedtime may cause problems for them later on in life. However, we don’t live in a puritanical technology-free world, so that begs the question: how can parents and guardians strike a balance?
Pediatricians React
The research, conducted by researchers at NYU and the University of Pittsburgh, looked at a sample size of 403 families to identify links between negative outcomes and television use in toddler night routines. That’s a message echoed by practicing physicians like Dr. Derek McClellan, MD, pediatric medical director at Central Ohio Primary Care. He emphasizes that the influence of technology on children and their nighttime routines is anything but new. “Pediatricians for years, this is even going back before smartphones and iPads and all that, we’ve always been against having television in your room partly because it really messes with those sleep biomechanics and how kids get into sleep.” McClellan says that the more portable technology has become—long gone are the days of CRTs and bunny ears—the more challenging keeping television out of young children’s bedtime routines has become. “We’ve largely been against it forever and now that most of these are handheld it really makes it more difficult, I think, on parents and caregivers.”
Families with Less Support More Likely to Use Television
One key point the study makes is that television usage in children’s nighttime routines appears more common among families who access public assistance programs and first-time parents. All of the families studied were from diverse racial backgrounds, were part of an early childhood support program, and were Medicaid-eligible. Dr. Sarah Adams, MD, a pediatrician and medical director at Akron Children’s Hospital, says that it’s important to set reasonable expectations and not be too difficult on yourself if you can’t keep technology out of your child’s nighttime routine. It’s something she says she tries to model in her practice. “I try to get to know the family and know their story, so that I can approach this sensitively and then that’s when we start to work together. And I ask, ‘What do you think you could do instead of using media, or what are those steps that you think you could take?’ Because me just telling them what to do is not really helpful.” Adams says introducing activities that engage the brain but not screens, like reading, are a way to get kids “off their seat and on their feet” in the one to two hours before they go to bed. McClellan says that, amongst the families he interacts with on a day-to-day basis, the main concern is preventing future behavioral issues like the ones described in research studies. For him, setting clear expectations and boundaries around technology early in a child’s life means preventing more conflict down the line. “We try to say, ‘Hey, you’re setting yourself up for more issues later. You might have solved a problem in your eyes for that three-year-old or for that four-year-old, but now you’re setting the expectation that this is okay.’”
Striking a Balance With Your Kids and TV
Both McClellan and Adams are cognizant of the fact that there is an inherent middle ground here. After all, eliminating technology completely is an unrealistic goal. McClellan says that what’s key is setting boundaries and intentions. “I think, in those kind of constraints, where it’s like, ‘Alright, we’re going to watch one video, it’s going to be a half an hour, we’re going to do that as part of our bedtime routine,’ and it’s the parent and the child doing it together. I don’t know that any of us would necessarily say that’s a bad thing,” says McClellan. Adams says a concern of caregivers she speaks to is how to adapt a bedtime routine once technology’s inclusion has become an expectation. She says building that capacity is about setting reachable goals. “The best thing that I tell parents is just, ‘Pick one thing to work on.’ So if limiting the time that they spend is their first objective, or maybe it could just be getting the technology out of the room… you know, baby steps, just try one thing at a time to get to the point where you’ve set the kids up for success in a positive way around media.”
