Parental cultural attitudes and beliefs affects Children's TV Media Habits

Wanjiku F. M. Njoroge

Differences in parental beliefs and attitudes regarding the effects of media on early childhood development may help explain increasing racial/ethnic disparities in child media viewing/habits, according to a study by Wanjiku F. M. Njoroge, M.D., of Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues.

A total of 596 parents of children ages 3 to 5 years completed demographic questionnaires, reported on attitudes regarding media's risks and benefits to their children, and completed one-week media diaries in which they recorded all of the programs their children watched.

According to study results, children watched an average of 462.0 minutes of TV per week, with African American children watching more TV/DVDs per week than did children of other racial/ethnic backgrounds.

The relationship between child race/ethnicity and average weekly media time was no longer statistically significant after controlling for socioeconomic status (parental educational attainment and reported annual family income), indicating that the observed relationship between race/ethnicity and media time was significantly confounded by socioeconomic status (SES).

Significant differences were found between parents of ethnically/racially diverse children and parents of non-Hispanic white children regarding the perceived positive effects of TV viewing, even when parental education and family income were taken into account.

"These findings point to an important relationship between parental attitudes/beliefs about child media use and time that could be useful for intervention work."

The study concludes,

"Because of the strong relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and media exposure in our sample, future research with larger samples of children from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds is warranted to better understand the complexities of race/ethnicity, family SES, and parental beliefs and attitudes on child media exposure." 

More information: JAMA Pediatr. Published online June 17, 2013. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.75

Dyslexia: Is It Closely Lined to Creativity?

Good news for those who can spell, the answer is no. It appears that more dyslectic people simply elect to work very committedly in the non-linguistic creative professions.

To be successful, dyslectic people actually have to work harder to overcome their linguistic challenges.

Fortunately, the best predictor of anyone's performance is not their IQ or personality, it is the amount of time one spends on a particular task.

Dyslexia is hereditary and, fortunately, one can learn to live with even severe dyslexia. A dyslectic person may not be well suited for teaching English or working as an editor in a publishing house, however, it does give them a distinct advantage in other creative professions.

Having struggled with reading and writing, the dyslectic person has failed early and often, thereby teaching them to persevere.

As Winston Churchill, another famous dyslectic and creative individual, noted: "Never give up - -never, never, never give up."

Advantages
What then are the advantages, if any, of being dyslexic in overcoming challenges? The early age confrontation of apparently insurmountable challenges teaches the dyslectic person to persevere in the face of difficulty and failure.

Solutions
They learn early to look at problems from multiple angles and use other skills to succeed.

Dyslectic people often colour-code information to aide their learning, using three-dimensional drawings to solve algebra problems and come up with intricate mnemotechnical cues to improve retention.

Working on small creative tricks to overcome challenges may help make them better prepared to solve problems.

It has been said that "luck is when opportunity meet preparation" and dyslectic people could thus appear to be "luckier" problem solvers.

Are people who are actually good at spelling be at a disadvantage? 
Since reading, writing and arithmetic are given a high priority in most school systems and IQ and other standardised tests favour people with linguistic skills, perfecting what one is being rewarded for can narrow one's development in other areas where there was also the possibility to excel.

One of the secrets to life is to avoid repeatedly chastising oneself over what is not done well.

A dyslectic may never become the best speller; however, a person can live happily with being mediocre in this area and simply delegate the more demanding writing tasks.

Being content with being average in one area, dyslectics are freed up to invest the over 10,000 hours required to become an expert in another area.

They can then leverage their inborn abilities and turn those abilities into a strong competitive advantage in an area in which they excel.

The Creative Economy may be the fastest growing segment of the Western World and creativity is now, more than ever, the source of this progress.

By encouraging people early on to find and grow their unique natural abilities to innovate and appreciating them for what they create, rather than for what they consume, we will have created yet another novel way of spelling success.

Credit this article to Soren Petersen