Monthly Archives: July 2011

I thought I’d provide you with some good news instead.

Last week I told y’all that The University of Washington had settled part of a lawsuit with the founders of Baby Einstein. In paying $175,000 of legal fees they admit that they violated the public records act. This may seem like a ho hum piece of news, but it’s really important for families to understand how research at places like the University of Washington affects our daily lives.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis has a website (and a lecture business) where he promotes himself as an International Expert on Media and Child Health. Seriously, google the phrase and you’ll see Dr. Christakis lecturing in towns like Bozeman Montana and creating healthy child guidelines with the American Academy of Pediatrics.

I know, you’re still wondering why I have such an axe to grind with this particular physician.

Well, Dr. Christakis (MD & MPH not PHD), along with his research partners Frederick J. Zimmerman, PHD and Andrew N. Meltzoff, PHD study the deleterious effects of media on children. Their research as it relates to Baby Einstein’s impact on young children is faulty at best and fraudulent at it’s worst.

Again, why do I care so much about one single study that wasn’t controlled, included self reporting on the telephone from two regions, has two sets of raw data (raw data is NOT interpreted, in a good study it’s just one set of numbers, if there are two sets of numbers there were errors, omissions or lies… none of which belong in a study) and measured babies watching an average of 8 minutes of television a day, but then they just multiplied to figure out what it might look like if that was an hour? Why would I care about a study like that? It’s like caring about the fake Autism study that put babies (and our total population) at risk by scaring parents out of vaccines.

From the study’s abstract:

Results

Among infants (age 8 to 16 months), each hour per day of viewing baby DVDs/videos was associated with a 16.99-point decrement in CDI score in a fully adjusted model (95% confidence interval = −26.20 to −7.77). Among toddlers (age 17 to 24 months), there were no significant associations between any type of media exposure and CDI scores. Amount of parental viewing with the child was not significantly associated with CDI scores in either infants or toddlers.

You would think that the babies watched an hour of TV a day, wouldn’t you? They watched LESS THAN NINE MINUTES ON THE AVERAGE. No, I’m not making this up.

Here’s the problem, Dr. Christakis is running around America (and according to his PR machine the world) peddling snake oil wherein you can raise a smarter, more literate child by keeping them screen free. What everyone is ignoring is that Dr. Christakis and his crew are once again attacking  motherhood and while they’re wrapped up in their white coats sitting in a laboratory telephoning parents they’re telling American Mothers that they’re bad at what they do.

More importantly this “research” is accepted by the AAP as truth and parents are told repeatedly that they are harming their children.

But most importantly this study appears to have been at least partially funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). My understanding about research (again like Dr. Christakis I’ve only got a master’s degree not a PhD like Zimmerman and Meltzoff) is that good research meant to answer a question, and not to prove a point.

A few things for smart parents to take into consideration before they make media decisions:

• Not all media is created equal, sometimes your kids just want to lay back, relax and be entertained. Just like we do. Should this be hours of the day? Of course not, but you already knew that, right?
• Some media is quite educational, you can participate with the kids and maybe learn some stuff, like letters, numbers, shapes and language. Watch TV or hang out on websites with your kids once in a while.
• Sometimes your older child will want to watch TV and your younger child will wander into the room. At times the younger one will be interested, other times they won’t be. Isn’t that funny how children self-regulate? Write a paper on that, maybe the University of Washington will publish it and make it the Mommy Law.
• If you need to get dinner on the table, make the beds or balance your checkbook without pretending you’re a home school mom and you’d like to do this stuff without your kids try and do it in 22 minutes. That’s how long a TV show lasts when you fast forward through the commercials.
• You also have permission to let the kids watch a show and you can sit and do nothing. Guess what, you’re still a good mom.

Telling parents that they aren’t permitted to allow a child to look at a screen until a certain age is ludicrous, particularly when it’s based on junk science.

Parents know intuitively what’s good for kids. Also, what’s good for the parents is good for kids. The first two years are special, sacred even, but when parents are being screeched at that everything they’re doing is wrong, bad and going to make the kids less intelligent we end up with a crew of frazzled and misinformed families.

Frazzled parents abuse children.

Faux science is robbing children of their health and of calm homes. Faux Science is robbing parents of the ability to trust their pediatrician’s recommendations. I’m urging the AAP to rethink their recommendations until they have something more than a dishonest study to back it up.

I blame these three researchers Christakis, Zimmerman, and Meltzoff for breaching the trust of the parents everywhere. It’s a horrible thing that for some reason (ego maybe?) these three researchers would impose their bias on American households without even having a set of data that the pubic can honestly review. I’ll patiently wait for the University of Washington to apologize for rubber stamping research that is opinion based and clearly meant to further one man’s career as opposed to benefiting the public that it was supposed to serve.

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For your entertainment I’m exerpting the following from the NIH Guidelines for the Conduct of Research:

• Financial interests include, but are not limited to,ownership of stock or equity, patents,consulting arrangements, collaboration  agreements, honoraria, service on advisory boards, or management appointments. Failure to disclose conflicts of interest can threaten the integrity of research and undermine the public’s trust in the NIH’s intramural research activities
• Scientific integrity is inseparable from meticulous attention to the acquisition and maintenance of these research data
• Research data, including the primary experimental results and computer andstatistical analyses, should be retained fora sufficient period to allow analysis andrepetition by others of published materialresulting from those data. Seven years is specified by the Federal Government (http://www.ori.dhhs.gov/documents/FR_Doc_05-9643.shtml) as the minimum period of retention but this may be longer under some circumstances, such as clinical research

If you’re like me and you love reading academic papers here’s one that is utterly dismissive of a large body of Christakis’ work (which he sells in paperback form) There Is No Meaningful Relationship Between Television Exposure and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
work

Yesterday I left my house at 10am and drove the Mexican Border to retrieve my daughter from a week at surf camp. Her camp was nestled between an Air Force base and the Tijuana River Estuarine. It’s not the sort of place you find accidentally, you’ve got to have a plan to get there.

Traffic was magnificent from 10 to 11 so at at 11.30 I stopped in the OC and had sushi with Ciaran and felt good about the world. Then I had this hideous panicked moment where I realized I could possibly be late to pick my daughter up and I all but ran out of the restaurant in order to get back on the road.

I’d taken Mr G’s car because it’s been crazy hot and his seats are air conditioned. I should have taken my car because my seats are soft. After an hour or so more my bottom hurt like crazy and I found myself wishing for more fat on my ass… surely this is the only time in my life this wish will be made.

I arrived at Camp Surf just a minute after 2pm and the kids were in the water surfing. SURFING my little girl was out there paddling away on a long board. As much as I don’t want to live by the beach now, the beach was my childhood, and this Manhattan Beach kid almost peed her pants when when that little furshintkener started walking up the board to hang ten.

The hideous drive was absolutely worth it. My kid was walking across her board.

And then she came out of the water and was pointing to her foot, and of course her friends all gathered round. She left in search of vinegar and I realized she’d been stung by a jellyfish. I’d spent my childhood being stung by jellyfish too, but we did the smart thing, we peed on our stings. We didn’t have to go roaming around a beach in search of a squirt bottle of vinegar. A little piss did the trick.

After Jane had been sprayed with vinegar she finally came to me so I could hug and kiss her. She coughed and sniffled everywhere. “That sounds awful.” I said, “Have you been like this all week?”

She nodded at me, and her counselor said that she’d been coughing all night long for the week. Jane went on to tell me that she’d spent one night in the infirmary and that she was bummed to have missed the morning surf session that day.

Then we went to the farewell barbecue and I got a sampling of camp food. There are no words. My poor sweet daughter.

When I’d brought Jane to camp I’d deposited $30 into an account for her to use at the camp store. They were allowed to buy a soda and a candy bar each day as well as tees, sweatshirts and some surf styled jewelry. At check out parents and their kids head to the store to get any change that might be left at the store. Jane told me she’d spent it all on candy and bracelets.

I worried that my daughter had been buying bracelets to buy friends.

We hopped in the car and started the long drive back to Los Angeles. Jane told me about her new friends at camp and a few of the brattier girls. She explained to me that they used grapes to demonstrate family trees and that Karen’s was the most complicated as she had four mothers and a father who wasn’t the sperm donor (hint: three divorces and mostly marriages to women with one man thrown in for luck). Jane coughed and sputtered a few times, she begged me to listen to Hits1, we listened to two songs and she fell asleep.

Our trip back to Los Angeles was full of serendipity and we passed by LAX just as Mr. G’s plane was landing. I nudged Jane to wake her up, pulled into a mostly deserted airport and watched as my daughter flew across the room to launch herself at her father while screaming, “DADDY”.

She hacked and coughed and Mr G gave her all the sympathy and hugs a little girl needs.

We drove home and she gave Mr G the same rundown she’d given me. At this point I’d spent seven hours driving and another 15 minutes as a passenger. To say I was feeling punchy was quite the understatement. When Jane told her Dad that she spent all her money on candy bars and bracelets I added, “for her friends” and Jane looked at me and said, “No mom, I bought them for you and Dad and Alexander.” I felt like the worst mother in the world.

We got home, unpacked and she ate basically everything in sight. My parents arrived a few minutes later with Alexander who lost his reign as an only child.

We’re back to being a family. Three of us are having a nice and restful Saturday, one of us is very very sick upstairs and watching TV all day.