40-inch screen or 4.0 scholar?

Here's an idea to help out you overworked parents: Just put a TV in each kid's bedroom and then you don't have to worry about those pesky parenting skills.

Let the tube be your child's baby sitter and mentor. Even toddlers can hone those valuable life skills such as working the remote and finding the right chapter on a DVD.

Add some video games or computer time to your child's daily schedule and before you know it, the parenting blues will be gone and you will have time on your hands to really live life without the dreary distractions of child rearing.

This scenario is only partly facetious.

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that eight in 10 of American children from babies through age 6 spend about two hours a day watching TV, playing video games or using a computer.

A third of children live in homes where the television is on most of the time.

The most noteworthy statistic from this study was that 19 percent of children under age 2 - almost one in five - have televisions in their bedrooms. And this is despite a firm recommendation from pediatricians that kids under 2 have no exposure to television.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

Last week the Inter Lake honored the best and brightest graduates at area high schools. Does anyone believe that those 36 students with perfect grades achieved their academic success because they were glued to the TV or computer games?

Critics often wail about how American students, academically, are falling behind their peers in the rest of the world.

Could part of that be due to the pervasiveness of television watching and computer-game playing by youths?

Come to think of it, maybe TV could be our secret weapon in the growing struggle with China over world economic dominance.

Perhaps if we put a TV into every Chinese child's bedroom, we could someday compete on equal footing.

Until that happens, parents might want to exert a little control over the TV immersion of young children.