Most parents believe that it is bad for children to watch too much television, because kids will learn things from TV that parents do not want them to learn, and TV can also affect children's health and behaviors in negative ways. However, a recent study shows letting children watch 3 hours of TV can actually improves their academic ability.

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Researchers at the University of London found "children who watched three or more hours a day were three months ahead of their peers who watched less than an hour a day, contradicting received wisdom that blames TV for diminishing youngsters' brain power."

Dr Alice Sullivan, the report's lead author and the senior academic at the university's Institute of Education, said "the educational value of children's television had been underestimated," she believes watching television can help kids to broader vocabulary.

The researchers also states in a study that "In tests comparing youngsters of the same social class, regular meal times only gave a six-week advantage in terms of reading and writing skills, while set bedtimes gave only a two-month head start."

The analysis concluded that "social class and in particular parents' education were the dominant factors" in determining how well children fared academically.

According to the Daily Mail reports: "Children with parents in steady, well-paid jobs were more than a year ahead than those whose parents work in unskilled or semi-skilled positions."

This study was published in the journal Sociology, and it has used test results for 11,000 British seven-year-olds tracked since birth as part of a long-term project called the Millennium Cohort Study.