Arakin 4 kurs new 001 176. indd

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average per day 
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age 3, the chances that child will have 
attention problems 
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age 7 increase 
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10 percent. A 2005 Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania study found that even watching “Sesame Street” 
before age 3 delayed a child’s ability to develop language skills.
• 
Sitting around watching television — instead
 … 
playing outside — 
makes kids overweight.
In fact, being a couch potato is not what causes 
obesity. Kids sit around to read, too, but no one suggests that reading 
causes
 … 
obesity. A 1999 Stanford University experiment found that 
when elementary-school children watched less television, they did 

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lose 
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excess weight; however, reducing
 … 
their television time did 
not make them more active.
What that suggests is that television-watching itself — unlike 
other sedentary activities such as reading, block-building or working 
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art projects — encourages overeating. Snacking 
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front 
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the tube 
is a widespread habit (
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kids as well as adults) and the barrage 
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junk-food advertisements only heightens that temptation. 
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70 percent 
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the ads children see 
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television are for food products, and virtu-
ally none 
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them is for healthy choices. A 2005 Harvard University 
study found that, 
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average, children eat about 170 more calories per 
day for each hour of television they watch, and all of those calories are 
derived 
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foods commonly advertised 
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television commercials.
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Television helps kids get to sleep.
The opposite is true. In a 2005 
study of more than 2,000 children, my colleagues and I found that 
the more television children watch, the more likely they are to have 
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irregular sleep and nap patterns. As common as it is — about three-
fourths of children had television as part of their bedtime ritual, ac-
cording to a national survey — allowing kids to watch television 
because they can’t sleep is part of the problem, not the solution.
• 
Kids watch too much television.
Actually, the bigger problem is 
what they watch and how they watch it.