30 May, 2006

Let us all bask in television's warm glowing warming glow.

ADD Attorney points me to about.com which in turn tells me about a study in the April 2004 issue of Pediatrics which suggests that I have ADHD because of TV and other modern 'stuff' (I may have paraphrased).
While I know that claiming something isn't true based only on my own life is poor science, I have to chime in and say. I lived without a TV up until the age of 15. Yet somehow I still caught ADHD, perhaps I caught it from the radio or it is possible that the TV beamed its evil waves at me from the electronics section of department stores (I never could resist the flashy lights, which made it hard for my parents to shop for furniture).
Based on my wide experience of being me, I think it is possible that ADHD folk find the TV hard to resist. Ohhh shiny, but that is a far cry from being a cause. Perhaps it is an effect, I always get those two confused.
So it is possible that I managed to have a decent childhood because there was no TV to waylay me with its flashy light and I lived in a rural area with trees to climb and rivers which I wasn't allowed to swim in (I was in fact an appalling swimmer, constantly gasping to stay afloat. But to admit that would be to remind my Australian friends that I was in fact a Pommy, born in that dark cold land where you don't learn to swim at birth. And being as in that town the English were as close to Ethnic as anyone could imagine I didn't want to remind "me mates, bonzer, okker, crikey and G'day" that I wasn't Dinky Di.
"No Mum, I'm wet because I fell into a bucket of muddy water."
"Yes I went to school today, I'd never even consider spending a day on a rope swing when school and education are so important."
"I don't know how I got so sunburned."

Now, the fact that this was published in 2004 and I hadn't come across it before (Did I mention I'm a librarian) may suggest that it isn't sweeping the medical treatment for ADHD aside. So perhaps I'm not the only one who has come across this cause/effect dichotomy in the research.


oh, and look the attorney found by blog before I found his
I don't know if I should blame my spam filter or my brain but I have no memory of his email to me.

Just to prove I can do the librarian gig, the study mentioned is:
Christakis, D.A. et other guys and perhaps also Mr ibid Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children in Pediatrics Vol. 113 No. 4 April 2004, pp. 708-713

1 comment:

ADHD Librarian said...

Oh,
I should have mentioned that the ADD attorney is no longer practicing at the blog.
He may have been disblogged?