Trust for Sale
By Kim Pleticha
Editorial: Parent:Wise Magazine, April 2006
I just hate it when heroes fall.
While I’m all for exposing the guy behind the curtain as something less than a wizard, I also think we need heroes in this world. Folks who encourage us to live up to our higher ideals. Folks who fight for those ideals.
Which is why is really peeves me when the “good guys” get exposed as the rats they really are. Not that I don’t think exposing them is good. I just wish they weren’t rats in the first place.
The latest heroes to hit the rat hole are The Sesame Workshop, producers of Sesame Street, and Zero-to-Three, a national nonprofit organization that educates parents and professionals about childhood development.
The two just joined forces to introduce Sesame Beginnings: a series of “educational” DVDs aimed at...babies.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has been pretty clear about keeping TV away from kids until they are at least two-years-old. Specifically, the AAP policy says “research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical need for direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers (e.g., child care providers) for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Therefore, exposing such young children to television programs should be discouraged.”
Yet here we have the most respected producers of children’s television teaming-up with one of the most highly regarded organizations on childhood development to produce something that flies in the face of the de facto standard for children’s media exposure.
I get that corporations need publicity. It helps them make money. And even nonprofits need to do that—it’s not like being a nonprofit exempts you from paying your bills or your employees. But if your stated mission is “to support the healthy development and well-being of infants, toddlers and their families”—as Zero-to-Three claims its mission is—how in the world can you endorse something that’s clearly crummy for kids? And still look yourself in the mirror, that is?
It’s not that these videos contain dangerous material: they feature a few of the Sesame Street muppets bouncing around introducing “concepts” not selling crack. But the fact is, babies shouldn’t be watching TV. Period. Playing with an empty box keeps them just as occupied and is better for their cognitive development. Both The Sesame Workshop and Zero-to-Three know this. However, they reason these videos are necessary because parents are sticking their babies in front of TVs anyhow so they may as well give them something good to watch.
Yeah. That’s like saying teenagers are going to drink anyway so we may as well provide them with a six pack of imported beer.
Parents trust The Sesame Workshop and Zero-to-Three to be sane voices amidst the cacophony of consumerism and bogus parenting advice. Yet both are riding that trust all the way to the bank. They know that lending their venerable names to these videos will encourage parents who wouldn’t otherwise plop their two-month-olds in front of TVs to consider doing it if it will “enrich” junior while mom is taking a shower or dad is cooking dinner.
This flouting of the public trust should make you angry, even if you don’t have a baby or a television. It demonstrates that everything is for sale: reputations, ideals, kids. Nothing appears to be off limits.
That means it’s up to us as parents to set those limits. To be the heroes. To fight for the higher ideals.
Because at the rate our national heroes are falling, we parents will quickly be left holding the collective cape. That’s OK: we can fly if we stick together—just as long as we’re not glued to the TV, waiting for Big Bird to help us get off the ground.