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" Now that technology is a big\u00A0part of our daily lives, you may not think it&amp;#039;s a huge deal if your\u00A0child\u00A0or grandchild spends\u00A0a couple of\u00A0hours in front of the TV. And hey, if they&amp;#039;re watching Elmo on Sesame Street then it can&amp;#039;t be too bad, can it? According to a new study published in the Journal of Developmental &amp;amp;amp; Behavioral Pediatrics, it can. The study suggests that young kids who spend much of their time watching television could be at a greater risk of being bullied later on in life.\u00A0 Why?\u00A0\u00A0If your toddler goes more than 2 hours a day in front of the TV, it takes away from more beneficial activities such as socializing with other kids or interactions with parents. By skipping out on these engagements, toddlers won&amp;#039;t be able to properly develop &amp;quot;emotional intelligence,&amp;quot; making them more prone to bullying in middle\u00A0school and beyond.\u00A0 &amp;quot;Emotional intelligence is driven by social experience,&amp;quot; said study coauthor Linda Pagani, a psychologist and professor in the school of psycho-education at the University of Montreal and a researcher at the brain health division of the Sainte-Justine&amp;#039;s Children&amp;#039;s Hospital.\u00A0 I talk, you listen. You talk, I listen. We look each other in the eye. Eye contact is a really powerful mode of communication. It tells a lot about people&amp;#039;s internal states. Kids can grow up with deficits in their emotional skills. The research study included 991 girls and 1,006 boys, and when the kids were 29 months old, the researchers asked the parents\u00A0how long their children were watching TV on a daily basis. Then in the sixth grade, they had the kids fill out a questionnaire about how frequently they were bullied at school. The researchers found that &amp;quot;for each additional hour a child watched TV, there was an increase of 11 percent in the amount of bullying they experienced in middle school,&amp;quot; as reported by\u00A0Today.com. Alan Kazdin, Sterling professor of psychology and psychiatry and professor of child psychology at Yale University told Today that &amp;quot;one of the best ways to protect children against bullying is to encourage them to pursue something they are interested in, be it sports or music or dance or another activity.&amp;quot; TV is great for many reasons, but too much of the\u00A0pastime can be a detriment to a child&amp;#039;s health.\u00A0Moral of the story? Make sure to spend less time in front of screens and more time doing meaningful activities with your kids.\u00A0 [via Today.com] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/family-friends/news/a51239/the-surprising-thing-that-could-lead-to-your-child-being-bullied/>