Dad’s world with Jonathan deBurca Butler

LAST weekend I posted a picture on Facebook. It showed the two boys, Fionn (3) and Luke (1), sitting on two separate couches in the living room watching television.

“Bold Daddy,” I wrote as the caption, “but God bless John Logie Baird.”

I don’t normally post pictures of the boys on the auld social media but this picture captured a rare moment of tranquility where both boys sat down and were quiet for the guts of... well as long as it took me to get my phone and shoot the picture.

The picture garnered 15 likes and two comments, one of which came from a friend in the form of “You said it” followed by a smiley face.

Television is a contentious issue. Some so-called childcare professionals, brain doctors and those involved in child development would probably tut tut at such a picture, but in the year and a half or so that Fionn has been watching the little bit of television that he watches, there is little evidence to suggest it’s turning him into a mindless, soulless, blimp.

Sure, it would be wonderful if he spent the time trying to split atoms, paint ceilings or decipher hieroglyphics but there are times in the day when children need a break from us and the things we cajole them into doing.

All that fussing and ‘shhhhhhaaaaaaping’ and influencing and don’t do X and do Y.

The poor kids need to hear from someone else every now and then, and if it’s a little blue troll that teaches them the relationship between letters and sound (Wallykazam!) or a Latina girl who goes on outrageous adventures (Dora the Explorer) then where is the harm?

Recently, a newspaper ran an article with a headline that declared: “Children who watch too much TV may have damaged brain structure.”

The article was based on a study from Tohoku University in Japan that looked at 276 children aged between five and 18, who watched anything up to four hours TV per day, with the average being about two hours.

MRI brain scans showed children who spent the most hours in front of the box had greater amounts of grey matter in regions around the frontopolar cortex and this, apparently, is a negative thing because it is linked to lower verbal intelligence.

What they couldn’t say was whether that was due to the fact that time spent in front of the gogglebox prevented them from doing other more interactive things and therefore lowered their intersocial skills or whether television itself was the direct cause of this phenomenon. There is also no mention of the type of programme viewed.

Children’s entertainment used to be confined to anthropomorphic figures knocking lumps out of each other or blowing each other up. But things have come a long way since then.

When you watched Tom and Jerry you did nothing, you were as the experts like to call it ‘passive’ but today with programmes like Wallykazam the child is invited to get involved and is therefore ‘active’. It seems if it is not educational, it is not really considered.

Of course, putting your child in front of the telly for whole afternoons is ridiculous but a few stints in a day?

As always it’s about balance. In fact, if television is used correctly it can be a nice way to relax with your child.

For myself and Fionn, Shaun the Sheep is our favourite current co-watch –cheeky, irreverent but above all imaginative and really, really clever; just like the two fellas watching it.

When Fionn watches the aforementioned Wallykazam, he talks back to the goblin when the goblin asks him to guess which word is right.

He raises his finger, inevitably gives the right answer and then shouts out: “I told you Wallykazam, you cheeky rascal” and another notch on his confidence-scale gets chalked up never mind his burgeoning ability to recognise the relationship between letters and sounds.

TV damages kids? Like most things, not if it used correctly.