A recent headline in the Daily Mail proclaimed:

Baby DVDs fail to boost word power: ‘Einstein’ show could do more harm than good¹
They went on to state that toddlers watching these DVDs had worse vocabularies than those who didn’t watch them.

Is watching TV good or bad for baby?

Other headlines have added to parents’ fears that television could be bad for baby:

TV Linked to Attention Deficit
Want a smart baby? TV’s not going to help
Does watching TV cause Autism?

By the way, on that last headline (from Time in October 2006) I can assure you here and now that, no, it doesn’t.

So, is TV bad for your baby?

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Moving onto solids – a decision made more difficult through parents having to wade through the controversy, myth, conflicting information, and out of date advice.

In America, weaning usually means stopping breast milk or formula – in the UK it means starting solid food, which is how I am using the term throughout this article.

X and I recently went to a talk from our children’s nurse on weaning. Among other things we were told that weaning may help your baby sleep through the night – specifically that not sleeping through the night may be indicative of the need to be weaned.

One parent of a 17 week old baby asked whether, as her baby was looking around when drinking her expressed breast milk, could she be unsatisfied by the milk and need weaning? She was very reluctant to wean so early, but worried about her baby. The nurse commented that, yes, weaning could be worth a try. From my experience and reading, the baby is more likely to have become more alert and interested in her surroundings. The message seemed to be that it would be OK to wean at 17 weeks.

The government guidelines used to suggest we wean at 3 months, then 4. Now the guideline is exclusive breast feeding for the first 6 months. Whether breast or formula feeding, the guidance is that babies should not be weaned onto solids until they are 6 months old. If weaning earlier, babies should not be given solids until at least 20 weeks.

Why is this? As parents we were probably weaned earlier than this and we survived! So what is the fuss about?

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