Hold the presses – there’s been another study! 

If you’ve been a parent for any length of time (say, 5 minutes or more), you know that every time you turn around, there’s another “study.” The anti-vaccine community finances studies to support their views, which are then contradicted by a study financed by the pro-vaccine community. Co-sleeping proponents tout studies that co-sleeping promotes better attachment and deeper sleep. Those who believe in separate beds for kids and parents flout research that supports the idea that independent sleep is safer and leads to more confident kids.

Hell, over the last 5+ years I’ve been conducting my own independent study on how much better my parenting is when I’ve gotten a few glasses of wine in me. Alas, no publisher yet, but hope springs eternal.

Now, the “experts” have published a “study” crucifying that poor sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea. Apparently, watching “Spongey” (so dubbed by one of my 5 year olds) shortens a 4 year old’s attention span. Which leads me to my first observation about this study:

Do 4 year olds really have an attention span?

My twin 5 year olds were recently 4 year olds, and I like to think that they were pretty typical for their age group. And their attention spans were about .44 seconds long. They bopped from coloring to wrestling to snacking to beating each other senseless to whining to tattling to racing around like monkeys on speed all day long.

Isn’t a short attention span a hallmark of the preschool age? They handled themselves well while in preschool, but when they were home, in a more unstructured environment, chaos almost always reigned. I don’t think this is something to fight or guard against – I think this is something to fight for and protect. By flitting from thing to thing, my children are learning what they like, what they want, what they don’t like and what they’re willing to live with. They’ve only had a little more than 5 years on this planet to figure themselves out. Of course their attention spans are short – there is a lot for a kid to cram into a day!

Another observation regarding this study – it was based on 60 white middle- and upper-middle-classed 4 years olds. They were randomly divided into 3 groups. One group watched the sponge, one group watched a slower paced (frankly, more annoying) cartoon, and a third group colored. Each group did their chosen activity for 9 minutes. So these “experts” are basing their “study” on the responses of a miniscule number of children, all of the same background, after 9 minutes of an activity.

I call shenanigans. You can’t run a study with a so-tiny-you-barely-know-it’s-there, homogenous group doing any activity for only 9 minutes.  If that were the case, I would be getting my wine and better parenting study published (I’m certain I can get more than 60 moms like me to agree to participate – I’d hate to be in the placebo group, though. I really do like my wine.)

I just need to wait this cartoon study out. In another week or so, there’ll be another study promising that short attention spans in 4 year olds are the goal of parenting and I will be on the correct side.

Until the next study comes out.