Back to School

                   Homework vs. Activities

                                                           By Carmen Roman, M.D.

As the new school year begins, general practitioners and pediatricians will be busy with annual physical examinations for children. Parents will have, among a host of others, questions about the pluses and minuses of extra curricular activities for their children.

“Is my child over-scheduled with outside activities?” “Which ones will benefit my child’s development (dance, sports, music, theater)?” “Which ones are more detrimental?” “Will TV and computer games interfere with my child’s schoolwork and progress?” “How much time should be devoted to free play?” These are just a few of the questions parents are concerned about.

The answers are not easy. Each parent must evaluate the situation according to their child’s needs and abilities. Working together with the school is very important. Talking with teachers will help in evaluating the time needed for homework. Some children will need extra time to complete their homework assignments. Others will finish quickly and still get good grades. All these factors must be taken into account by parents in evaluating a child’s needs.

It has been well documented that studying music and dance and participating in sports increase the ability to concentrate and that children with this increased ability do better in school.3

Emphasizing moderation and treating each child as an individual with different needs and abilities provide answers to figuring out a child’s scheduled activities. When kids do well in school, their self-esteem improves, giving them a sense of mastery, “I can do this.”

Extra curricular activities for a child, such as sports, music, theater, and dance also will improve motor coordination, self-esteem, and socialization, which are important for the growing child.

Regarding time for free play, parents need to be aware of what their kids are choosing for free play. Many children spend hours watching TV, playing computer games, exploring the Internet, and listening to music on an iPod or Walkman, all of which tend to isolate them. It is more positive for kids to spend their free time socializing with their peers.

A new study looking at TV viewing by younger children1 says that it all depends on which TV programs a child watches. Watching educational programs can be a positive learning experience for children.

In the September/October issue (2001) of Child Development, co-author Aletha Huston, Ph.D., professor of child development at the University of Texas, Austin, says, “Educational television can have a very positive impact on young children.”

For the study, researchers recruited 200 children in the Kansas City area who were from low-to-moderate-income families. About 40 percent of the children were African American, and the rest were Hispanic or Caucasian American. During the three-year study, researchers followed children from two to four years of age. They tested the children and visited their homes every year. The tests included reading, vocabulary, math, and school readiness. “Children who watched educational programming, particularly at ages two and three, performed better on tests of school-related skills than children who did not watch educational television,” says Huston. “Watching a lot of general audience programming was related to poor skills.”

"Children who watched educational programming, particularly at ages two and three, perfromed better on tests of school-related skills than children who did not watch educational television." Aletha Huston, Ph.D.

After controlling for the family environment, which included parents’ education and family income, Huston found that watching educational programs on television might indeed translate to better skills.

“What children watch on television is the key,” says Daniel Anderson, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.1 “When the television programs are designed to teach, children learn good things. If they are not designed to teach, and especially if they include violence, children learn things that end up being bad for their behavior.”

Anderson points out that for children from low-to-moderate-income families, such educational programming is filling in parts of their childhood experience that they might not otherwise get. “These children very often don’t have other educational resources available in their homes, such as age-appropriate books, and parents often don’t understand the importance of reading to their children and encouraging their children to read,” says Anderson.

School-age children spend a great deal of time on the Internet. The situation is the same as with TV; parents need to emphasize moderation and control the sites to which their children have access. Parents need to use filters and stay aware of what their children are viewing. Watching too much television and spending many hours on the Internet take away time children could use for exercise and other school- and community-related activities.

According to Niranjan S. Karnik, M.D., Ph.D., 2 “Another area of scholarship, for example, that has demonstrated substantial relationship between mass media and experience is between body image and popular culture. While the media may not cause eating disorders, the popular image of beauty can be heavily influenced by the images around us, and children’s ideas can be shaped in part by the media around them. (Brumberg, 2000; Steiner et al., 2003). Current research supports the idea that children internalize socially sanctioned images of beauty and that these exert an influence on the ways juveniles view their own bodies, often in distorted ways.” Again, parents can play an important role here. Helping their children develop realistic and healthy attitudes about their appearance and guiding them into activities that will help keep them fit can relieve some of the pressure children feel to conform to popular notions of beauty. 

Dr. Karnik continues that, “It is important to teach children how to critically evaluate the various media influences around them and select what they find useful and productive.”  

Dr. Roman is a psychiatrist and a child psychiatrist in Menlo Park.

References:

1.  Monogram. Soc Res. Child Development 2001; 66(1): I-VIII. 1-147. Ambulatory Pediatrics 2001:1(5):244-2

2.  Niranjan S. Karnik, M.D., Ph.D. Mass media and youth culture. Handbook of Mental Health Interventions in Children and Adolescents: an Integrated Developmental Approach Hans Steiner, Editor. Jossey-Bass Books.

3.  Music’s Contribution to Academic Success. www.childrenmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/academicsuccess.html