I want to be famous

Forget about the days when children looked up to powerful women as role models. Today Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears are the people that children look up to and idolise. In the celebrity culture of the 21st century are celebrities considered to be the leaders in our community? Is the celebrity culture indicative of the values and morals which our society considers to be important? Is the society we live in today only concerned with money, fame and designer clothing?
Celebrities have become familiar icons we see day in and day out. We read and talk about the latest antics of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton but is this how children, define themselves?
Media- TV, tabloid magazines, newspapers and particularly the internet are today more readily accessible to children of all ages. For young girls, it’s opening Pandora ’s Box. Everything’s at their little varnish-coated fingertips. Could the media’s portrayal of people in the spotlight, who seemingly achieved overnight success, lead some youngsters to feel less than positive about themselves? Could it lead them to believe that education is not necessary for success and that fame and fortune can be easily be achieved?
I don’t think it’s all bad to have children looking up to role models who have achieved success through their artistic or athletic talents. This is certainly a less classist approach than teaching kids they need to have a PhD. to amount to anything. So maybe we adults just need to be a little more careful about who we worship and make it clear that it is through hard work and deternination that success is achieved.

No more TV

Yelling at the television used to be something adults did while watching “Who wants to be a millionaire!” But young children have become the real pros.

Sit down with a 3-year-old to watch “Blue’s Clues” or “Dora the Explorer,” and see the shouting erupt. Whenever a character faces the camera and asks a question, my daughters are usually answering it.

Paulo and I have long been contenplaiting aboloshing TV in our home all together. Do we want TV to be the focus of our living space? Do we want our girls to grow up glued to the box? Would we be depriving them? Currently they have a TV in they bedroom. They’re allowed to watch an episode of a French cartoon in the evening and a Disney movie on the weekend.

Active engagement with television has been an antidote to criticism that the tube creates zombies. “Blue’s Clues,” has been credited with helping young children learn from the screen. Academic research has shown that viewers ages 3 to 5 score better on tests of problem solving than those who haven’t watched the show. But what happens with children younger than 3? Does Bianca (2) really gain from watching TV? Should babies and toddlers be exposed to television at all? Is there any chance that they could actually learn from the screen? While debates rage among parents, pediatricians and critics, developmental psychologists are trying to apply some science to the question.

Researchers at the University of Washington found that toddler who spent time in front of the television translates into lower reading and short-term memory scores at 6 and 7 years old.
"Watching even really good educational shows ... is bad" for children under 3, according to Frederick Zimmerman, co-director of the Child Health Institute and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Since 1999, the Academy of Pediatrics has recommended no television for children 2 and younger, including educational shows. For older children, the academy suggests no more than one to two hours a day of "quality" television, perhaps watching an episode of 'Sesame Street' or 'Mickey Mouse Club House' and not an episode of 'X-Factor'