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Natural Awakenings National

Kinder Care: Parents Improve Kids’ Media Habits

The latest U.S. Census data confirms a promising trend toward more protective, involved parenting than just 10 years ago. “This generation of parents is monitoring their children more diligently,” confirms Ruby Takanishi, president of the Foundation for Child Development, which publishes an annual Child Well-Being index. That means more restriction on kids’ television viewing (though switching to video games is a factor), more extracurricular classes and fewer children having to repeat a grade.

More good news came in the finding that the number of children ages 1-2 read to seven times a week increased from 48 to 53 percent, including those below and above the poverty line. Also, some 78 percent of children under 6 eat dinner every night with their parents, and 53 percent eat breakfast with their parents every day. Those numbers were about the same for both poor and non-poor families notes Jane Knitzer, director of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University.

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