This study examined the patterns of ongoing play manifested over a year's time by 141 three- and four-year-old boys and girls at nursery schools and daycare centers. The relationships between such play and concurrent language usage and the child's patterns of television viewing at home were examined during this period. Parents of the children were also randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups or to a control group. Intervention groups received training either in stimulating the children's imaginative play, stimulating the child's cognitive and language development, or in controlling the child's television-viewing frequency and encouraging more discriminating use of the set. The control group merely kept logs of children's viewing as did the other parents. Based on this research, eight recommendations were made. Family interview data relating to home organization, daily routines, patterns of discipline, parental aggressive behavior, and traumatic events or stress, suggest that the laxity of control over TV viewing and a general lack of alternative interests by the family may expose children to greater influence by the TV programming and yield the danger of more initiative aggressive or hyperactive behavior. (Author/JEG)