How to stop the demands for TV

[hollingbury]

Near four year old son watches about 40 mins TV late afternoon. On weekends, he will watch in morning too, sometimes a film.

He asks for TV all the time. It's like a mantra. We say no but he still asks.

We are now wondering whether the denial has made it into a bigger thing?

I am pretty sure he's just a kid who likes TV, so even if we increase the amount of time he watches, he would still want more - but we are considering this.

Any ideas? He's got no siblings and won't have.

Hmmm well I know mumset sometimes behaves like tv is a big bad wolf but I have two dc - one nearly 12 and one 2.5- and we have tv on all the time. Not overpoweringly loud - just on in the background. They ignore it a lot of the time- it's never been an issue. If they want to watch something they do but because it's not a forbidden fruit they just often behave as though it isn't there.

I know it's only my own personal experience but both dc are very bright and outgoing - my eldest is in the top sets at school and has already exceeded her end of year targets. I was also brought up with tv on all the time and was accepted into top universities.

It's up to you but personally I can't be bothered to have fights about tv just because of some studies that say tv is bad for you. Surely it depends on the rest of your life style and other stuff like that.

What are you doing instead of letting him watch TV?

What about a token system? He can watch, let's say 5 TV programmes but for each programme he watches he must give you one of his 5 tokens (you could use washers or little pebbles or marbles). That way he can watch TV pretty much whenever he likes but you're still limiting it.

'...just because of some studies that say tv is bad for you'

Er, actually, I think that probably is worth taking note of!

What do we do instead? Different stuff. He is pretty bad at entertaining himself, so we do stuff together - trains, arty stuff - and then he will do some things on his own like ride his bike or scooter, cars, sometimes trains - we go out and see friends a fair bit. He likes being out and active.

Token sysetm is a nice idea.

It probably depends on your DS. If there is a screen on, anywhere in the vicinity of DS, he will be glued to it. He has always been like this for as long as I can remember. He's 5.8yo now.

We therefore limit screen time. He has about 20 minutes in the morning before school, and about half an hour when he gets home. Depending on what we're up to at the weekend, he may have up to two hours in a day.

It works best if is either watching a specific programme (so there's a defined end point) or we also use a timer.

DS has ASD, and we find this routine works pretty well for him, despite his difficulties with tolerating frustration and transitioning from one thing to another.

His mood deteriorates noticeably if he has a lot of time on the tablet playing a game that is frustrating him. We are pretty careful about what he watches/plays for this reason.

We give DS (3 yo) 2 hrs max screen time a day, including tv, YouTube and cbeebies app. He can use it however and whenever he wants. Giving him this control has really stopped the whining, and often he doesn't even max out his time.