Strangechord

“My wife and I have two children - a baby and a very, very active two-year old. Like most parents, we used the television as a parenting tool; it gave us extra time to cook dinner, relax and generally operate without a child under foot. Then we agreed to abandon our crutch, and go without TV for a week.

“Miraculously, our house was silent again. My two-year-old, no longer needing to compete with blaring commercials, spoke softly. Toys were soon liberated from their scattered stockpiles, books appeared open on the floor and calmness entered our house for the first time in years. We discovered that when on, the television turned off our daughter’s mind; when it was off she was turned on at full volume. Our parenting aide was actually our parenting curse, causing behaviorial problems hours after Bambi went bye-bye. All parents need this experiment. Maybe your Ritalin baby needs a balanced diet and a calm, quiet house, not a pill.”

- Larry Breckenridge
Denver, Colorado
letter to the editor in the latest issue of Adbusters, in response to the magazine’s TV Turnoff Week campaign in April

From the same issue: “In the marketing world, they’re known as ‘tinys.’ At just six months of age, babies are already forming mental images of corporate logos. One in four children utters a brand name as their first recognizable word.”