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Owen: Two Milestones in only One Day!

At 7:58 this morning, Owen achieved another developmental landmark. Jenn was changing his diaper, an event that often makes him so happy, he rolls about and smiles, emitting little cooing noises. But today his reaction was slightly different. He laughed. An actual giggle, a "ha-ha"! Talk about making the rest of your day.

Earlier that morning he displayed yet another mark of maturity—he watched television! Okay, I suppose that doesn't sound so hot, what with how rotten "the idiot box" can be, but still: it was the first time he paid attention to a medium of communication with both aural and visual stimulation. Music always soothes his inner savage beast, but I have not observed that he was actively listening to the music, making out the sounds as a discrete artifice. Yet today I could tell that he was paying acute attention to what was on the television screen.

And what was he watching? C-Span coverage of the 9/11 commission hearings? Matt Lauer's fawning interview with some doofus celebrity? No. It was Boohbahs.

A visit to the Boohbah Zone and PBS's parent and teacher guide will still not prepare the unitiated for the mind-tripping intensity of this program. I grew up on H.R. Pufnstuf and had seen Lewis Black's Daily Show take on the Boohbahs, but even then I was disarmed by the psychedelic nuttiness of the show.

But possible drug-content isn't the core of controversy surrounding this new creation from Anne Wood, the woman who gave us the reassuring Teletubbies, the quallude to the Boohbah's stricnine-laced blotter acid. (Er, or so I can only guess...cough.) The main problem for childhood development specialists concerns a discrepancy between the Woods' stated target audience and the show's actual content, which seems more appealing to children under the age of two. As reported by David Zurawick of the Baltimore Sun (actual link to Dallas-Fortworth Star Telegram):

Dr. Stacey O. Irwin, who teaches a course in children and television at Towson University in Maryland, sees a disconnect between such onscreen behavior and the target audience claimed by Wood and PBS.

"The Web site for Boohbah says it is for children 3 to 6, but I think the content is a bit young for that age group," said Irwin, the mother of children ages 3 and 6. "I think they probably do not want to admit that children 2 and under are viewing it because the American Pediatrics Association strongly states that there should be no television for that age group."

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the group's official title, provides some common sense guidelines for parents to use in regulating their child's television exposure.

I confess: We watch a lot of boob tube. Not always good boob tube, either. Not just news and educational stuff (which have their own ideological issues, but that's another matter for another post). We will watch some really dumb shit. I am fascinated by The Apprentice, Jenn is a Trading Spaces addict, I really do love Raymond (mostly because of Brad Garrett). Often while feeding the bottomless well my son has turned into, I'll flip on the tube just to keep myself awake or entertained in a lukewarm fashion by whatever dreck is on. Negotiating child, bottle, cloth to wipe up drool (the "blooby cloth") and the latest issue of The NY Review of Books can pose a challenge to one's sense of balance and coordination.

The Multnomah County Library sent us a package the other day. It included a bookmark, pamphlets, a video and Read to Your Bunny. And I did. Owen loved it. And the twenty minutes the book recommends is a good approximation of his attention span, because when I then switched to reading another book, Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey: A Children's Book, Owen got restless and agitated. I don't think the two are actually connected.

Posted by kevinmoore at March 24, 2004 11:01 AM | TrackBack