No TV before school?!

For us it was Noddy, all As and A*s at A-levels here so clearly didn't impact concentration too much

We don't have tv before school. But that's what works for us. I would struggle to get them out of the house if the tv was on and they are not morning people. I appreciate that for some children it helps though.

What on earth was your child watching that hyped them up that much?

I suspect that is correlation not causation. Tricky kids are put in front of the tv because they are hard work in the morning. Tricky kids are more likely to grow up into tricky adults and therefore more likely to end up in prison.

It seems more likely that other factors are at play and it isn’t an episode of Octonauts over their cornflakes that is sending them into a life of crime.

I guess it depends what works for your household.

We have a no TV before school rule. We used to let the DC watch TV with breakfast, but we found that it often slowed down the getting out the door process, plus the DC would often get over stimulated and they’d get upset when it needed to be turned off.
So we decided to try no TV before school for a week, it made things massively easier and calmer in the morning for us, so we’ve basically stuck with the no TV rule before school since then.

But, all kids are different, and if TV before school works ok for other families then what’s the problem?

Milkshake - Channel 5s early morning slot of programmes for children started in 1997.
So almost 30 years ago.
Hardly new 😂
I watched TVam which started in the 80s as a child. I watched (and joined in with) the exercise slot (Green Goddess) then watched Roland Rat.
Both programmes probably took up 20 minutes of time.
I think Cbeebies/CBBC started morning programmes in the early 2000s. Again not new. That's a quarter of a century ago.
The important thing - in my humble opinion - it's what you watch, not when you watch it.
Ten minutes of Bluey in the morning is fine.
Ten minutes of inappropriate YouTube crap - not fine.

Nope, never had TV on in the morning it would have distracted my kids.

No screen time before school.
No screens at the table (this includes adults and phones)

I think it must depend on the family because watching a bit of TV after dinner has never stopped my two winding down when it then comes to bedtime. When homework is all done, dinner eaten etc it seems a fairly sensible time for a bit of tv to be allowed - the only sensible time really.

Mine are a tween and a teen now though!

I should clarify. I sometimes watch TV in the evening! But we usually eat late as a family (always after 6) and there’s no need for children to then be watching TV that close to bedtime.

I’m not naive. I just know that this kind of thing won’t make a blind bit of difference to the crap parenting. However, it does give free rein to parents to tell the school exactly how they should be running the place every time the teacher does something they don’t agree with.

This is so minor compared to the stuff we have to deal with in school, I’m astonished any school has the time or inclination to try and police this.

I'm the same as PP - my daughter watches TV in the morning and occasionally in between home time and dinner time but not after dinner! She's encouraged to do more playing and crafting in the evening.

Yes, often via drug addiction and/or prostitution.

That’s really strange to me, as after dinner is the main time I would want to watch tv!

No time for TV in the morning.
Whoever is doing the school run gets up first gets ready. Makes breakfast, then gets kids up for their breakfast then gets the kids ready, once their ready it's time to leave.
Then the person staying home gets the youngest up feeds him and then gets him ready for the day.
TV don't usually go on until after school and some days it don't even go on at all.

We’ve always done TV before school. Gasp- my DDs are allowed to eat their breakfast in front of the telly while DH and I finish getting ready for the day! I don’t think this thread is very representative of most households. My hard line is no TV after dinner.

I think because I’m not a morning person, and find the mornings hard as it is, I like a bit of time before the sensory overload of the day starts.

Tbh I find talking radio hard at the best of times - a background voice talking on and on and you can’t even reply to what they’re saying - and they aren’t got to stop talking (unless you turn off the radio - but I mean if someone else has the radio on).

So in the morning that grating sound of a voice talking on and on is too much before I’m fully awake.

Luckily my children aren’t massively energetic morning people either (dd17 does like the radio but usually we get up at different times so it’s ok).

My exh was someone who liked the radio on loud and to make lots of noise in the mornings and couldn’t understand why I needed to ease into the day - but I love to play music in the kitchen whilst making the dinner, which to me is a more noise-friendly time of day! Plus I like music of my choosing if I have something in the background.

I've genuinely never heard about this in relation to TV. Devices all the time, but not TV.

There's some studies that say TV before school is one of the first steps in the early years to prison pipeline.

Trouble is, poor parenting impacts the teachers’ ability to get on with teaching.

That’s why they make recommendations about what happens at home - so that actually educating the children becomes the focus at school, rather than handling behavioural issues such as not concentrating in class because they’ve been overstimulated by screens before school.

You might be one of few on this thread but in general TV is a normal morning staple for lots of people. I'm not a big TV watcher but I do remember remember watching it before school when I was younger. Stuff like The Big Breakfast.

We don't have time for TV in the mornings so this is moot. But even if we did, we wouldn't. They can do something lowkey in the morning- read a book, do some stickers, play for a bit. Anything.

I think the problem is not 'TV in the morning' but that there is genuinely a generation of children who know of no other forms of entertainment that is not screen based. And therefore cannot wait in a line, sit for 10 mins in the car, hang around waiting for their parents to heat something up for dinner, walk around a grocery store or take a short bus ride/public transport without needing a screen to distract them. And the usual response to people pointing this out is: would you rather they were kicking or screaming?

As if there are two modes for children: stare at a screen or behave badly, and nothing in between...

How naive of you. It’s probably why they made this suggestion- they have to deal with the kids because parents aren’t doing parenting!

Wow! TV before school. Is this a thing now? I’m obviously very old.

Obviously you can do whatever you want to do in your own home. It’s just advice they are giving to help your kids get more out of school.
Our school suggests that parents avoid using screens at all Monday to Friday as they would like to use the WHO suggested screen time for a child for educational use and if they watched any more at home they would be over the recommended limit. Didn’t affect us at the time as the children didn’t have screens or TV at all at that age, but we have stuck to it as they’ve got older and have seen the benefits.