When I was a youngster, my father made a deal with the three children in our household. Read a book and you got paid. A nickel for an easy book and a dime for a hard one. This seemed like a good deal for a while, but my older sister consistently beat me in earnings until after I had figured out that entrepreneurial activity paid better than reading.

The local bar on Highway 301 — just a little further south of South of the Border — which mostly catered in the daytime to tourists traveling to Florida, but which also happened to sell penny candy, sodas, popsicles, ice cream and other things other than beer and liquor to entice the young children of the neighborhood to get them to bring in their pennies, dimes and nickels was a constant haunt for many of the children of the neighborhood. We just lived too far out of town to make it to the drug store ice cream counter. So Johnson’s Bar had to suffice.

I’m not sure if this was a money making venture for the bar, as the friendly old lady that worked the bar counter seemed to enjoy watching the children delight in picking out the penny candy. I was told later that this joint actually made their real money after hours selling bootleg liquor out the back door after the legal liquor store’s closing hours had passed. At any rate, thanks to that bar and a host of others up and down the line of that two lane highway to Florida, traveling must have been rather treacherous in those days.

In any case, we didn't watch too much television or stay inside other than to read, since our parents weren’t frightened by constant terror stories — that kind of rare event didn’t regularly appear on the television news back then and people didn't watch much of it anyway. But I didn’t read as much as my sister either, after I talked the neighborhood kids into bringing me all the empty soda bottles they could find, for which they got paid by this young seven year old entrepreneur two cents. I promptly filled up the wagon and hauled them into the bar and I got paid the full three cents that the store got. The other children didn't want to walk all the way to the store for a penny and I didn't mind saving up enough bottles to fill a wagon load.

Much too young for vacuum cleaners though. In any case, the profits were quickly absorbed by the candy counter. My older sister became a college professor and I became a lawyer, so things worked out fairly well on that reading gig I guess. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Between 2003 and 2006 ... the number of videotapes and DVDs aimed at babies under two on Amazon.com grew from 140 to 750. Sales of so-called “educational” toys rose 50 percent between 2002 and 2003 alone. Even the grandfather of kiddie media — Sesame Street — got in on the game with a video series for zero- to two-year-olds called “Sesame Beginnings.”

Meanwhile, a growing body of academic research was indicating that television and videos are harmful to children under age two, and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strong recommendation that this group not be exposed to such media at all.

Parents think babies are getting something out of “educational” videos because they’re riveted by the activity on the screen, says Thomas. But researchers say what’s really going on is an “orienting reflex” — the neural response to new, startling information. It’s what happens when you hear a loud noise: The brain scrambles to figure out the cause and location; whether you've experienced it before; and whether it requires a flight-or-fight response.

But a baby who’s watching a video (or television) gets caught in an endless orienting-reflex loop. Thomas cites other studies that have linked early television watching to attention deficit disorder — even autism.

A study published this month in the Journal of Pediatrics found that DVD (or television?) watching by children age 8 to 16 months hinders language development.

For every hour a day spent watching baby videos (or television?) , infants in that age range understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who didn’t watch them. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood coalition filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over DVDs marketed to babies.

Do yourself and your kids a favor. Throw out that television. If it damages children that much, we adults must also be taking a hit as well. Which explains perfectly well the phenomenon of George W. Bush.