To not understand why children need a TV in their room?

[mrsruffallo]

Following on from another thread-I am quite surprised how many kids have a TV in their bedrooms.
Surely they can read to go to sleep?
Or watch the one in the living room?
Come and enlighten me, why do children need their own one?

Well maybe that says a whole lot about the sort of people you know!

Hiya, shiny! Yes, I'm a poor, deprived, uneducated thicko living in a conservation area sink estate who also allows her children to watch TV. I watch it, too. I am so unimaginative and thick I don't know how to read at all.

The nearest museum is fairly far from here, and it involves either driving much farther (somehow I came to know the difference between further and farther, but it's a miracle that escapes my pea-sized brain) or a ferry crossing, so we yokels have to do what we can.

My DC both have TV's in their rooms. They don't have ariels in so they can't watch tele, its just to play on game consoles and and on a saturday night they are allowed to watch a DVD for an hour before they go to sleep.

Every other day they are allowed to read for half an hour before they turn their lights out.

I really do get pissed off with people who make huge sweeping judgements about a family just because they allow their DC to have a TV in their rooms!

Oh, shiny, I've visited many museums. I've crossed oceans and changed continents to see particular museums. Nothing wrong with museums. I just don't see how they are somehow morally superior to seeing other things, including TV or films.

[rolls eyes emoticon]

I really do admire those parents on MN who are able to single-handedly amuse multiple DC for days on end without resorting to TV. Are you superhuman? Seriously. Coz I love my children to bits but I am human and I need a break from them - and if that means that they sometimes watch TV in a different room from me, well, I have absolutely no problem with that at all. I cannot spend all day, every day, with young children without needing some time to myself. This does not make me lazy/a bad mother/a monster. Even if my DC were old enough to read by themselves (as per the OP) I still would not have a problem with this. Same thing with chocolate: I'm not prepared to give it up, which means my DC are allowed to eat it too. I simply cannot see what all the fuss is about.

I read a study that concluded that there is a correlation between the number of tvs in a house, the number of hours watched per memeber and obseity.

The more tvs/hours watched = greater obesity (no shock there then)

but the article I read also said that out of the many studies done that only two had a positive outcome for children:

1.watching less than 20 mins a day provided some stimulation, (any more and the effects becamme negative)

1. and communal watching could improve family quality of life.

so having a TV in a room would be unnecessary.

I'll go and try and find it.

I can assure you that nobody in my family is anywhere near overweight (I'm a size 6), we don't have speech or learning difficulties, and our social skills are not hampered by the fact that we have - gasp! - 2 TVs in the house.

but mummydragon, that's about as conclusive as saying that my granddad smokes 20 a day and is still alive at 93.

Hardly means smokers are less likely to get cancer.

Well, we have 4 tv's. One in the living room, one in our room, ds's room and the play room.
We watch a fair bit of tv, all together and seperate too.
I'm a size 6, dh long and lean, ds very slim and as fit as a lop due to his footie and cricket obsession, dd still a lithe little toddler.
We have a very active social life but also love our tv.

TV=Obesity are not mutually inclusive by any means.

My children have always had tvs in their rooms. I guess we fit the steryotype. I am poorly educated, we live on low income blah blah.

But just because I let my children have a tv in their bedrooms does not mean I allow them to watch it whenever they want.

My children have to ask permission to turn ANY tv on in the house. They are not permitted to go to sleep with the tv on or watch tv after 6 (for the younger ones) or 9 for the older one.

My DS1 is 15 and he has to ask to watch his bedroom tv.

It is not the case that you either have only one tv and care what your kids watch OR they all have tvs and sit up watching the playboy channel till 2pm.

One of my DS's has SN. I allow him to watch more tv than the others ever did. Not to shut him up and get him out of my way but because he gets so much out of it. I have never seen a child so involved with the programmes he is permitted to watch. He uses props and joins in with the story and learns vocab etc. He is 6.

We do a lot with him aswell and do not relie on the tv to educate him but its bloody helpful.

None of us are overweight either and we have several games consuls about the place (I hate the bloody things). And guess what? Even though we are dreadfully non U we dont let the kids play Zombie Killers Mash up the Mall with a bottle of cola rammed in their gobs.

My ds has had a tv in his room since he was three. I live in a small flat and my dc would be bored to tears without it. FWIW he is advanced in his reading. I take them out to the park for a couple of hours every day rain or shine and we visit museums and libraries regularly. I live in London so these things are very accessible for us. My dc watch quite a bit of tv and I do worry about that sometimes but they do alot of other things too so it balances out I think.

I don't have tons of money actually but I don't think I fit the stereotypes mentioned on here. This weekend I took my dc to a large open air paddling pool on Saturday for the day and took them on the train to Hove on Sunday. On Wednesday after school we will go to The Natural History Museum We are out and about all the time.

Ahhh thanks shine but technically I was poorly educated - in Harringey in the 70s .

The Atlantic, shiny. Paris, in fact. Madrid. Seville. London.

Balloonslayer, my husband hearts you but he's annoyed that he's taken up valuable time getting engrossed in this thread!

He loves your sense of humour. Thank gawd we're happily married or he'd be talking to you about the possibility of a tv in dd's room rather than me

no way, no TV and no computer om their rooms...why? because then I can't monitor what they are watching. Have you seen some of the dodgy vids on youtube? Parents should keep an eye on all this stuff - its their job!

As is your survey Noonki - admittedly, watching TV for 12 hours a day whilst stapled to the sofa eating only Big Macs and necking fruit shoots is probably going to assist in a bit of weight gain, but allowing children to watch TV away from the rest of the family is not, in itself, going to cause obesity or any other "negative" attributes. Admit it, you are implying that people who allow their kids to watch TV in their rooms are lazy and stupid, and are raising lazy and stupid children. This is simply ridiculous, prejudiced and wrong.

I'm with chegirl and barnsleybelle on this one.

mummy.. well said.

Erm DD1 has a TV and a DVD player and a Laptop and an XBox in her room.

She just got level 5's in her SATs (the highest level), she's got a reading age of 14 (she's 11 BTW) - she just chose to spend her hard-saved pocket money on 3 books. Oh and she's on the school football and netball teams and does martial arts twice a week. Oh and she likes spending time outside on her bike or the trampoline.

She watches tv on a Friday evening or the weekend, uses the laptop for supervised homework sessions (we have endless 'nanny' programmes to stop her getting on the tinterweb without our permmission) and the Xbox is used very rarely.

She does watch lots of tv though, downstairs with me and DD2 and DD3, I grew up watching lots of tv and my mum has a degree , she's a feckless single mum though......

Poor little thing, she's so uneducated, stupid, thick, poor, lazy..............

I'm some of the above though, only GCSEs for me