to think friend is making life unnecessarily hard on herself by never letting her dd, 2.5, watch TV, when she has a newborn as well?

[emkana]

Friend rang today, stressed, trying to get her 2.5 year old to have a midday rest looking at books by herself. I gently suggested TV but she didn't see that as an option, which made me feel a bit silly. I'm all for limiting TV but when I was in her situation the TV was a lifesaver! And it hasn't made my children into couch potatoes at all, now they are 7 and 5 (the older ones) they hardly watch TV at all, because they are able to do all sorts of other stuff.

Gem have you banned TV or not? I don't get it. You say you will allow them when they are older but then that they use it as an "educational tool".

haven't banned it as such, just don't turn it on when kids are around. DS is only 2.7 and DD is 9 weeks.

don't get me wrong, I'm not against tv for kids, but I don't want them to watch it at a very young age, I'm thinking more like a couple of regular programmes a week from age 3 or more like 4, then say half an hour to an hour in the evening after school for primary school age. I just prefer for them to start off doing other things and not stuck in front of the tv, and it annoys me when people say gleefully 'ooh,you'll never manage, you'll HAVE to put them in front of it.' Not against TV per se and of course for entertainment, imagination, not just educational programmes or whatever..

Gateau -
"Astrophe, watching dvds on a laptop is the same as watching dvds on a tv; the fact that you have a keyboard and mouse and not a remote control is the only difference."

Yes, I quite agree What you use to watch a DVD on makes no difference to the DVD, obviously.

The thing is, we are in Australia now, so we could have a TV (there are no TV licences here - its free), and we could choose to only watch DVDs on it, but (as I said below), Its better for us (DH and I) not to have one at all, as we find DVDs far easier to ration than on-tap TV (for both us, and the kids). I'm sure there are plently of people who don't have the self discipline issues we do I'm not condemning TV, just think its a resource that should be used wisely, and especially wisely when kids are young, and we find not having TV but using DVDs the best and easiest way of managing and controlling our usage.

How about TV at nursery then? Shock, horror I hear. But they use it for chill out time at the end of the day, when all the children are tired, so I don't think there's anything wrong in that. All children need time to chill out - they don't need to be active and learning all the time. Yes, I'd love to have the time to sit and read book after book after book with DS when he's tired, but in reality these are the times I have to try to get things done so we strike a balance. I think that's just common sense.