Children definately need to learn through play but at the same time we need to do non 'play' like activities like reading a book or flash cards coz as much as they learn through play, we also want to teach them to learn through other methods such as reading. Otherwise why would we start reading to our kids so early in their lives knowing that they probably understand very little from the books we are showing them. If a child is allowed to play and play and play only, there is definately nothing wrong with that but when you expect the child to sit down quietly or when he joins a school in future whereby he needs to know when to be quiet and when he can be playing, he is going to face some difficulties. That said, nothing is irreversible here just that it takes time...
JTS, My gal watches TV at nanny's place. I dunno how long she watches TV but the TV is not switched on for her, more like for nanny's grand daugther. At home i may let her watch another half hr when we first reach home so that i can get changed or get dinner ready. Sometimes we watch TV together also like her favourite, mickey mouse clubhouse, pocoyo and my friends tigger and pooh. She kinda out grown baby enstein already... But right now, i also dun have attention problem with her. Her bedtime routine incoporates picture cards, singing and some reading. Typically we read about 5 books to her before bed and show her 3 sets of picture cards each set about 10 pics before bed. So far she enjoys sitting through storytime. There was even once when i felt very tired and tried to cut short the story time by reading 3 books instead of 5 but she crawled over to the books that we picked out and picked it up shoved it to me, haha, like telling me we are not done yet...