<p>I thought this thread was going to be about the need for children to take liquid medicines because they could choke on pills.</p>
<p>Pardon me while I slip back into the previous century.</p>
<p>I’m so sad for kids today. Yes, modern tech devices are electronic babysitters just like TVs were a generation ago. However, it used to be that the TV got left at home, at least once in a while. Now parents can “plug” their kids in anywhere, anytime. Whatever happened to just talking with your kids when you are out in public?</p>
<p>This digital culture is becoming poisonous. Kids shouldn’t be introduced to something as life-sucking as a tablet until they’re older and more ready to accept that “being connected” isn’t the best thing.</p>
<p>This should come as no surprise to anyone. </p>
<p>[Children</a> take one and a half minutes longer to run a mile than their parents at their age - Telegraph](<a href=“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/10460282/Children-take-one-and-a-half-minutes-longer-to-run-a-mile-than-their-parents-at-their-age.html]Children”>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/10460282/Children-take-one-and-a-half-minutes-longer-to-run-a-mile-than-their-parents-at-their-age.html)</p>
<p>I really have no opinion on this… My oldest child who is (and always was) very tech savvy said he will put his kids (that he doesn’t have yet) in a no tech school. I find his POV very interesting…I wonder what he is thinking about the “good old days”. I’m also interested in what the research has to say.</p>
<p>I think this should just be apparent. When children are growing, they need hands on experiences and actual human interaction. Playing with a tablet does not constitute ‘hands-on’ experiences. </p>
<p>Technologies great. It’s not like kids should be completely barred from using the stuff…but there’s such a thing as too much. Kids need to be active. It’s hard to be active when you’re playing with technology all day long.</p>
<p>Not only are the kids slower, but eleven-year-old children are, “now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago” in terms of cognitive and conceptual development." A direct result of school. (Doesn’t come as any surprise to me…)</p>
<p>But that’s another topic.</p>
<p>Direct result of school? “Kids are less fit” is also a direct result of poor schooling? From the article:</p>
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<p>And it goes on and on and on… So… Chinese kids are getting smarter and are not falling behind in their development yet they got less fit also…</p>
<p>Or you mean kids get less fit from really poor schooling, like lack of decent PE lessons? Yup, I believe this.</p>
<p>Mini, let me guess, a poor elementary school age kid in rural India does a lot of work that can be classified as hard labor here in the US and is not going to get fat or dumb from using a tablet or a laptop once in a while, because she is not using it for shooting up aliens or watching cat videos while munching chips, 24/7…</p>
<p>Direct result of school? “Kids are less fit” is also a direct result of poor schooling? From the article:</p>
<p>Different article, different study. </p>
<p>"It would seem that the idea of things always getting better and better isn’t a new one. Since the introduction of intelligence testing in the U.S. and elsewhere in the early years of the 20th Century, scores on so-called “objective” criterion-referenced tests have increased in a consistent manner. IQ scores have improved roughly three points per decade, which, if true and taken at face value, means our grandparents and great-grandparents were on the whole a bunch of morons, imbeciles, and idiots who couldn’t tie their shoes, and those were the days before velcro. Until the 1990s, test scores had to be re-centered every 15 years or so to reflect improved performance. The “Flynn Effect”, named after American-born New Zealand psychologist and philosopher James R. Flynn who first described the phenomenon, mostly reflects a change in cognitive demands made on the population, and, secondarily, enhanced performance in the “bottom half”, resulting at least in part from improved nutrition (before 1950), smaller family size, and other environmental conditions, and especially increased exposure to and value placed upon scholastic skills, scientific and managerial reasoning, and habits of mind. There is, however, little evidence that this ostensible increase in “intelligence” has made people more competent or effective in coping with the demands of everyday life.</p>
<p>In fact, there are some scientists who believe the process of improving intelligence and of coping with the demands of living (I don’t quite understand why these should be different) ground to a halt in the late 1980s/early 1990s, not just in the United States, but in other “well-schooled” nations as well. In 2006, I came across the work of Professors Michael Shayer and Philip Adey of Kings College at the University of London. Adey and Shayer have been following the results of tens of thousands of children on intelligence tests over the past 30 years.</p>
<p>And their findings? Eleven-year-old children are, “now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago” in terms of cognitive and conceptual development.</p>
<p>Now these are no fly-by-night researchers. Professors Shayer and Adey have for decades been two of the foremost and most highly respected lights in British education. Their work is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Britain’s leading think tank on educational matters. I could go on and on about their credentials, but perhaps it is enough to say that as far as mainstream educational researchers go, these guys are at the top of the heap.</p>
<p>“It’s a staggering result,” stated Shayer, “But the figures just don’t lie. The results have been checked, rechecked, and peer reviewed.” “It is shocking,” said Adey, “The general cognitive foundation of 11- and 12-year-olds has taken a big dip.” “The test,” noted cognitive scientist Denise Ginsberg, measures both general intelligence and “higher level brain functions.” “It is nothing less than the ability of children to handle new, difficult ideas.”</p>
<p>The results caused experts all over England to question whether the standardized national tests they have been using are of long-term benefit to learning, and cast doubt, according to Paul Black, another educational luminary at King’s College, London, on the usual claims that standards are in fact improving.</p>
<p>There is A LOT more. But not now.</p>
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<p>Anecdotes != data."'</p>
<p>I had premies 21 years ago, and Sally is indeed right. The official recommendation at the time was indeed for premies to sleep on their stomachs. The back to sleep campaign came out a bit later, after our children were past that stage. I spent more than enough time in an NICU and with the various neonatalogists that I do know what I’m talking about here, emberjed.</p>
<p>I had a premie 31 years ago and I frankly don’t remember if I was given instructions but I put her mostly on her stomach although since she slept with us that meant she was also on my chest so I could check her breathing.</p>
<p>^That’s just what we did, emerald. Crazy to think about all the huge things we had to figure out as new parents…kind of puts the college stuff in perspective, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Didn’t your premies have apnea monitors to ensure that they were breathing / heart was beating? The NICU showed us more than enough literature to convince us that putting them to bed with us, on a softer mattress / with pillows, was a horrendous idea for a premie with A’s & B’s (apnea and bradycardia).</p>
<p>*
Children take one and a half minutes longer to run a mile than their parents at their age - *</p>
<p>Well my (younger)daughter runs marathons, so while we were both ran track in high school, I dare say she is more fit @ 23 than I was.</p>
<p>D didn’t go home with a monitor. She did have ABCs (+cyanosis)in the hospital, but they didn’t let you take them home until that had resolved. The only babies who went home with monitors were ones who were still on oxygen.</p>
<p>She also was wide awake at night,possibly cause the night shift wasn’t as busy & they played with them. When we first brought her home, she slept in a cradle next to the bed in the other room, but because I had to keep checking on her, I was just exhausted by morning. She came into the bed soon after.</p>
<p>Mine didn’t have apnea or bradycardia either. He was just small and needed time to develop his sucking reflex before they would let us bring him home (17 days later). When I read what emerald said I assumed she meant she wanted her baby in bed with her just for reassurance. I always checked on my (nearly full-term) daughter “to see if she was breathing” as well, even though she wasn’t born with any health issues. In fact I probably did that with both kids well into grade school!</p>
<p>I am a very light sleeper, Ive often wakened to find the cat sitting on the end of the bed staring at me.
I wouldn’t have slept with her if I had been unable to wake up even with an alarm like one of the boys on another thread.
Which I cant imagine. I just tell myself what time I want to wake up and I do. Which is strange because usually I have little sense of time. 
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<p>That’s one of my obscure talents too. And when I wake up in the middle of the night I can almost always tell what time it is before I look at the clock–I am rarely more than a couple minutes off.</p>
<p>We are probably so good at this because we weren’t exposed to electronic devices at too young an age, right? :)</p>
<p>Kramer had one of those “internal clocks”. </p>
<p>I notice when I should be getting up, I start dreaming about needing to be somewhere ( usually the dreaded class that I’ve never attended, and now there is a test and I don’t where the class is), and encountering one obstacle after another. Lately they have been in Morocco, although I have never been to morocco, and I don’t know how I know it’s Morocco. </p>
<p>Okay, back on topic.</p>
<p>Just and anecdotal follow-up. I was at a college basketball game last night. The family behind me consisted of mom, dad, grandmother (young grandma), and two kids ages 3 and 18 months. The 3 yr old was of course given a tablet to occupy himself. During half time, I tried to talk with him. I asked him direct questions like, “what is your favorite book” and his mom tried to get him to answer, but he could not pull himself away from the device in front of him. He was completely absorbed in it. He was like a zombie. Yikes.</p>
<p>I am against putting any child below the age of 2 in front of a TV screen. What I tell my high school students is when you take a walk in a housing development and look in the living rooms with TV’s on, you will notice a constant flickering on the TV and a projected flickering light on the wall. As parents we all know that brain development in children is so rapid in those early years. Don’t put a “strobe light” in front of a child! Perhaps some of you know the exact amount of picture change/strobe effect is in modern TV per minute or second?</p>
<p>I also think after the age of 2, children should only watch slow animation movies, such as Dumbo and Bambi.</p>
<p>I have no scientific studies to back up my assertions. I just want the best brain development for every young person!</p>