The findings have important implications for efforts aimed at helping reduce TV watching among Latino kids, Dr. Darcy A. Thompson of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, an investigator on the study, told Reuters Health. But first, she said, further investigation is needed to understand the reasons behind the differences in TV watching patterns she and her colleagues observed.
Thompson and her team looked at data for the year 2000 from the National Survey of Early Childhood Health on 1,347 mothers of children four to 35 months old to examine whether language might be linked to TV habits. About half of the study participants were white; 21 percent were English-speaking Latinas; and 27 percent were Spanish-speaking Latinas.
While children of English- or Spanish-speaking Latinas watched about the same amount of TV up until they were a year old (around an hour a day), differences emerged in older children.
Among kids between one and two years old, those with Spanish-speaking mothers watched less than an hour and a half of television daily, a little less than children of white moms, while the children of English-speaking Latinas watched around 2 hours a day. READ FULL STORY >> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6125MO20100203
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