Excessive screen time by infants could cause impairment in a child’s development, Dr Amma Benin, a Paediatrician at the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH) Tema, has revealed.
She advised parents to control children use of electrical gadgets to safeguard their health during their formative years.
She indicated that babies exposed to excessive screen time might encounter speech developmental challenges as they grow up.
Dr Benin said this in her address on the topic: ‘Cultural practices that affect child health’ at the Ghana News Agency’s weekly health advocacy platform dubbed ‘Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility’.
She also encouraged pregnant women to eat balanced diets to enhance the health of their infants and discouraged the perpetuation of negative cultural beliefs, practices and myths surrounding for example, the consumption of eggs during pregnancy for reasons that ‘children produced would become thieves.’
She further emphasised that oral traditions such as storytelling, proverbs, poems, and playing games like ampe and oware, among others which were good cultural practices and constituted both physical and mental exercises, should rather be encouraged.
‘It helps to stimulate the minds of children by helping them memorize the stories told by the elder of their families in their own minds,’ she said.
Dr Benin advised parents to avoid exposing their babies younger than 18 months to phones or any screen programmes like cartoons during their busy schedules at home.
Notwithstanding, babies needed to interact with human beings to help them pick up their speech abilities while growing up.
She said oral tradition really helped in the speech development of children in the past and parents needed to adopt the habit of indulging their young ones in moral practices to develop the baby’s capabilities of reacting well with people throughout their life development stages, from infancy to adulthood.
Mr Francis Ameyibor, the Tema Regional Manager, GNA, stressed the need for documentation of traditional practices that were helpful for the development of society.
Source: Ghana News Agency