Show your child cartoons: Dos and Donts

Cartoons are an indispensable part of every child's life. However, animation is not always good, sometimes it also comes with a lot of risks that parents need to be aware of.

Since its inception until now, cartoons have been associated with the maturity of many generations of children. There are many girls, boys who imagine themselves as beautiful princesses, brave knights after watching cartoons like Peter Pan, Aladdin and the magic lamp, Cinderella ... In fact, cartoons can positively and negatively affect a child's cognitive and behavioral development. The following article by aFamilyToday Health will tell you about the effects of animation on young children.

The positive effects of watching cartoons

Cartoons can play an important role in the cognitive and behavioral development of young children. Here are some of the positive effects of animation:

1. Help your child adapt to learning from an early age

Cartoons can help children start learning from an early age. This is evident with the types of educational cartoons with the aim of teaching children about shapes, numbers and colors. These movies help children find learning to be an enjoyable activity.

2. Cognitive development

Watching cartoons can help children develop cognitive skills such as long-term memory, increased attention concentration, logic processing, reasoning, and visual and auditory processing.

3. Language development

Besides, cartoons can also help your child expose to many different languages. This will help your child learn to communicate with others. You can show your child cartoons in their mother tongue or a foreign language to help them learn the language better.

4. Enhance creativity

Cartoons can help increase children's imagination and creativity . The child can come up with new ideas that are inspired by cartoons and create interesting stories.

5. Reduce stress

When watching funny cartoons, children can enjoy laughing out loud. Laughter is a great way to relieve stress. In addition, it also increases immunity , releasing endorphins hormone to help children feel positive.

6. Educational

Negative effects of watching cartoons

Although cartoons have many positive effects on young children, sometimes it also has many potential risks that parents should note:

1. Increased violence

Animated movies with elements of violence can increase a child's violence in real life. In addition, children may think that no one is hurt or hurt when being hit because the characters in the animation often get rid of hurt very quickly.

2. Disrespectful and lack of empathy

There are some cartoons that have rude, even disrespectful, behavior towards teachers and elders. Children can imitate this behavior and become stubborn with their parents or teachers when punished for bad behavior.

3. Profanity

Cartoons may contain language that is not suitable for children. When children watch these types of cartoons, they are impressed and begin to use the vulgar language they learn from the cartoons.

4. Non-social behavior

There are a number of cartoons with antisocial behaviors such as murder and fighting. There are even some movies with love scenes, not appropriate for the age of the child. These things can affect a child's behavior and make them think that aggression is okay.

5. Lead to health problems due to sedentary lifestyle

Spending too much time sitting in front of a screen can lead to a number of health problems such as obesity , vision problems and nutritional deficiencies due to eating and watching TV habits.

How to limit the negative effects of cartoons?

Once you understand the pros and cons of cartoons for your child's behavior, you need to have tips to limit these bad things:

1. Watch with your child

When watching cartoons with your child, you will keep track of what they are watching and observe their responses to different events in the story. This can help you bond more with your child, see which cartoon characters they like, understand their thinking and improve your relationship with them.

2. Limit movie viewing time

Limit the amount of time you watch cartoons for children, usually you should only show them about 1 hour a day, especially for young children. Encourage your child to go outside to play rather than watch cartoons.

3. Choose the right cartoon

Only allow children to watch age-appropriate, educational cartoons that are free of violent or negative scenes.

4. Explain to your child the difference between cartoon and reality

Teach your children what's right, what's wrong, and what's not. For example, you could explain to your child that although the cartoon character escaped after going through a battle and was not injured, this is not true in reality.

5. Use monitoring applications

Use parental control software to track, filter inappropriate content, and block content you don't want your kids to access. Make sure you don't leave your child alone in front of a TV or iPad for hours without keeping an eye on what he or she is watching.

6. Discover useful information channels

Explore well-informed channels like Discovery, National Geographic and Animal Planet to provide children with highly educational programs. In addition, after your child finishes watching, you can take them outside to experience what they have seen on TV. For example, if your child likes to watch animal world shows, take the time to take them to the zoo so they can see the animals in real life.

7. Use of audio files

For stories, you can have your child listen to the audio files on the phone instead of watching cartoons. This will help your child learn to listen better.

8. Don't let your child eat while watching TV

Watching TV while eating can create bad eating habits such as liking snacking. In addition, children also tend to eat more when watching while eating. So, when it's time to eat, ask your child to sit down to eat with other family members and avoid watching TV during mealtimes. This will help your child focus on meals and eat a variety of nutritious foods.

The animation has a positive or negative effect, depending on the type of movie the child watches. By limiting your watch time and encouraging your baby to go out and play, you can help your baby grow up healthy and happy.