No TV before school?!

[Tireddadplus]

Hi! Just got a message from our DD’s (5yo) school that we should not let the kids watch any tv before school! Bad for their brains or something…

DD watches a bit of tv while myself or DW sort out lunches or whatever…just makes getting out the door easier!

Am i being unreasonable to ignore this advice?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Yes, often via drug addiction and/or prostitution.

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.

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 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 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!

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

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

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.

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?

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.

What on earth was your child watching that hyped them up that 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.

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

I don’t see the harm on it if all ready dress, teeth done, et cetera and they’ve got 5/10 minutes before going to school

I always watched TV before school as a kid - I remember trying to time myself with how quick I could get dressed/brush teeth etc to ensure I could always do it during the adverts (there were always adverts back then to help!) I’d be bombing it to my bedroom as soon as the adverts started and sprinting back downstairs to see if I’d got back in time! I think it’s the parenting of other areas that really make a difference - I was a model student, did excellently at school and went on to become a teacher. I don’t think watching TV before school everyday did me any harm - I knew how to concentrate and behave because my parents taught me to.

It means the kids are unsettled when they arrive and less able to focus and I bet they have worked out that the worst offenders are the ones watching tv

life as a parent isn’t about making everything easy / it’s about raising a child be be a happy healthy adult and that includes teaching them to amuse themselves within hour a screen at breakfast time so that they arrive in school able to learn

Are you being sarcastic? Genuine question because I cannot see how there can possibly be causation there. I’m a 90s kid and everyone I know watched TV in the mornings before school, I don’t know a single person who has been to prison. I could understand if you argued a link between violent video games and time in prison or unlimited access to YouTube/internet and prison time but just watching TV before school? I watch the news in the morning before work to catch up on world events while eating breakfast, what’s the problem with that?

@Justkeepteaching yeah I don't think she was serious....

With MN you can never be sure 😅