Won’t somebody think of the parents? Reevaluating the audience for children’s educational media

Abstract

Parents are an essential component of research conducted in the field of children, adolescents, and media (CAM). Not only do they determine whether their children will be allowed to participate in research studies, but they also frequently serve as research participants themselves. One prominent thread of CAM research has investigated how parents shape their children’s understanding of educational media. For example, Rasmussen et al. (2016) recruited parents and their 2to 6-year-old children to watch ten episodes of the socioemotional program Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood (DTN) over two weeks. They found that children who watched the program demonstrated higher empathy at the end of the study, but only when parents regularly elaborated on educational TV programs at home. In a related study, Mares, Bonus, and Peebles (2018) asked parents of 2to 10-year-old children to recall an instance where media exposure had a positive impact on their child. Most parents (70%) were able to recall an instance. However, longer-lasting effects were reported by parents who discussed the content with their children at some point after exposure (e.g. encouraged their child to put those lessons into practice). Typically, CAM scholars interpret these results to mean that children need help connecting lessons to relevant experiences in their everyday lives. Although this view is wellsupported by research, there is an alternative (albeit compatible) way of understanding these findings. Specifically, it could be that the parents in these studies learned useful instructional techniques from educational television, which they later practiced with their children. For example, Mares et al. (2018) detailed one mother who used a song from DTN to manage the frustration that her daughter felt when exiting a toy store (presumably, without purchasing any toys): “I’ll say, ‘When you get so mad that you want to roar . . .’, She [my daughter] will say, ‘ . . . Take a deep breath and count to four – one, two three, four!’” Undoubtedly, this example demonstrates how a child might practice an angermanagement strategy that she gleaned from educational television (i.e. counting to four). However, this example simultaneously demonstrates how a mother might practice an instructional technique that she gleaned from the same program (i.e. assisting her daughter with emotion regulation). Considered under this alternative lens, this example seems especially noteworthy. Indeed, it was the mother who first used the technique modeled in the program, whereas the daughter simply followed suit. In other words, the mother’s learning facilitated the daughter’s learning.