Study: Kids watching hours of TV at home day care

SEATTLE — Parents who thought their preschoolers were spending time in home-based day care eating healthy snacks and learning to play nicely with others may be surprised to discover they are sitting as many as two hours a day in front of a TV, according to a study published today.

When added to the two to three hours many parents already admit to allowing at home, preschoolers in child care may be spending more than a third of the roughly 12 hours they are awake each day in front of the electronic babysitter, said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle and a researcher at the University of Washington.

The figures come from a telephone survey of licensed child care programs in Michigan, Washington, Florida and Massachusetts.

Of the child care programs surveyed, 70 percent of home-based child cares and 36 percent of centers said children watch TV daily. They were watching TV, DVDs and videos. The study did not track what kind of programs were shown.