Is our 3 yo DD watching too much telly?

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Bit of a family debate going on here. DD1 is 3 and badgers us constantly for telly. Today, for example she watched for 40 mins (8.15 -8.55)in the morning; about 5 mins at midday (turned it on herself - DW switched it off); 10 mins at just gone 1pm; and finally 15 mins before tea. All in all a bit over the hour in total for the day.

Personally, I don't think this is too bad but DW is very concerned about it. DD1 always asks to watch when we come in and always asks just before I go to work. On a normal day she'll ask to watch maybe 20 times during the course of the day. Saying "no" and dealing with the wee-soaked tantrums is becoming a little wearing. We're also somewhat worried about DD2 (9mo) picking up the habit.

How do you ration the box? Is this typical? Are we worrying unduly? Will our kids turn into obese no-marks who keep the remote between their huge rolls of fat?

We bring up the tv guide on cbeebies website and give DD (nearly 4) a choice i.e. before preschool you can watch either lazy town or big barn farm. same after lunch and at teatime.

to my surprise she is learning to understand the concept of deferring pleasure; she will often now elect to wait until one of her favourites is on.

she also does watch more than your DD, BZ.

We got rid of the tv (for a number of reasons) but still have DVDs for the laptop. This is good in some ways - you have control over what dc watches, and bad in others - I know all the words to all the DVDs we have now!

Mind you, getting rid of the tv has been good, I can't believe how much time I spent watching absolute shite before (although I do miss Grand Designs...)

Have you got Sky+? We tape a load of dd's favourites and then can just put on the one or two she wants. This prevents it from running on and on. We love Sky+ in our house - I never miss my programmes either - not that I get chance to watch much anymore
We try to limit the telly to an hour a day but more recently this has been creeping upwards. New baby due in 11 days and I'm very concerned that I'll be resorting to it even more!!!

Your current amount doesn't seem excessive to me. Personally, I just pull the plug at times of day I don't want it on. DS presses the button, nothing happens. He either accepts it or has a paddy - but either way I don't have to get involved. I don't think he really considers that I control the electric supply and have the power to make it work again!
(May involve some measures to make sure DD doesn't just plug it in herself).

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sometimes my 3 yr old watches a dvd like Finding Nemo or wahtever

thats over an hr in itself

Well ds (3.5yrs) also constantly badgers for the TV sometimes

The problem for us was I think that was I was using it generally when it suited me e.g. if I needed to get something done or if the morning was proving difficult to organise etc).

This was OK except I would find that sometimes I struggled to get him to turn it and yet he wasn't really watching it and he would be bad tempered wanting me to play etc but not wanting the TV off - i.e the worst of all worlds

He does all this a lot less recently and I think that is because we have decided to have a few rules which we have made very clear to him.

In the morning, he can watch TV only once he is dressed and he has had his breakfast. I make sure this happens after 8am as if ds gets up very early (which he does a lot) we generally use that time for playing.

This means he gets about 40mins as we leave at 8.40am for nursery/work. When I put the tv on in the morning I explain which programs are on in that 40 mins and that we nedd to leave after charlie and lola or postman pat or whatever it is that finishes at 8.40am. I generally never make him leave in the middle of a programme, if I can't make the timing work I use some prercorded programmes so that he can leave at 8.40am and not leave something half watched.

There is NO tv in the evening. Both dh and I work and our evening with ds are short so we don't use TV at all. I did experiment with using it a bit - to chill out tc, but tbh it made bedtimes more of a battle for us.

At the weekends if the weather is bad we may put on a dvd or a video but ds knows once that is finished it goes off.

A few weeks ago he was quite ill (as was dh and) so the TV was on A LOT more than usual. When he got better, it was noticeable how he was badgering more for the TV and how his behaviour got worse in the day because of it.

We just kept reiterating the rules again and he has settled down and accepted them now.

Also there is now way ds could turn the TV on to cebeebies himself yet.

We have a freeview box and in order to get it to turn on you need to switch it on using the TV control, then each time you need to select the external box to get the freview channels. Then you need to use the freview remote to select channel 71 and sometimes you need to switch to aux on the rempote if the dvd was last on. I have trouble getting the cbeebies channel on let alone ds who can't count much past 5 yet

Your daughter is not watching that much? perhaps because she is bugging so much for it is because she is generally bored. Is she involved with physical group activities? At 3 I was in swimming and gymnastics 2x a week. My dad also to me to the park and/or zoo everyday. Mom took me shopping everyday. No stroller, I walked? wore me out. I had no interest in TV really? (ok Sesame Street and The Flintstones were almost daily watches) till 1985(?) Muchmusic started? Canadian MTV.

I let my kids watch tv whenever they feel like it and if we are not doing something else (i.e., it's not on for background). Much to my surprise, they never nag for it, and they don't watch all that much. Perhaps the idea of rationing it makes them desire control all the more, thereby increasing the nagging (this has been the case in our household for other things).

You could try this approach and see what the efect might be.

BTW, in case you are wondering, ds1 (also 3) is not a model child by any means, and nags incessantly for sweets/jelly/ other things he wants.

in my house we have rules on watching - usually after lunch and pre-tea (I can't bear to have 2 hungry kids around when I'm making tea!) only TV in the morning if we're all ready for school (so that translates into no tv!

Plus I use DVDs and Sky plus a lot. This means you can put on one programme or one episode and then it goes off after that has finished. My lot seem to accept that that's it and we switch it off.

you'll find that as they get older, they will watch less anyway...just because they have school to go to!

do the timer so it turns itself off

We don't have a telly either, just the odd dvd. DD is only 14 months at the mo anyway, so she only watches about half an episode of a dvd before crawling off to do something else.

Not having a telly is a complete life-changer for the adults of the house though, we talk much more, read loads, have board games or friends round, cook proper tea, spend time with the baby. It's ace, and all we're missing out on is vegging in front of rubbish, as most decent stuff is availiable online anyway.

Maybe DD is asking for telly because it is rationed?

Our DD1 is allowed to watch whenever she wants, more or less. She's chatty, really good imagination etc etc.

Back this morning to say, what else are the kids supposed to do at 6am on a Saturday morning? DD can rack up more than 3 hours telly before DH gets up on a Sat .

Lots of great advice here...

Agree that the total amount of time ok...just the obsession with it which is aggravating.

Having clearly structured telly times, with absolutely no leniency is probably the solution...then your daughter will stop asking for telly throughout the day (after a while).

I do this with DS1 (4). He gets Cbeebies only on Saturday afternoons. He knows this and doesn't ask to watch at any other time. If he has been particularly good during the week, he is allowed 1 30 minute dvd as a treat. Because he is very clear on the rules, he now gets up and turns off the telly when his viewing time is finished.

I've made it clear to him that SOME telly is fine...too much is not.

Doesn't sound too bad at all, my older kids have been know to watch telly all morning some rainy Saturdays.

However since January this year we have had NO TELEVISION AT ALL!!!! We are renovating our house and had to move the TV (which was in the kitchen) and it got put on a table and has just stayed there since. The older two used to watch it having breakfast before school and often as soon as they came home. i think its just becasue it was there. the weird thing is they don't seem to have noticed or even missed it. they do watch videos and DVDs but otherwise play on the computer or just do other things. I am amazed. they are 8 6 and 2 years old and sometimes they do fight more because they are bored but I don't want to fix the TV up and get back into a habit again. Not sure what to do long term. I've not missed it and dh hardly ever watched TV anyway. May just put it in a room somewhere the kids don't go into much for when they are in bed.

I think what i am saying is that kids will just use something that is easily accessible and it turns into a habit. CBeebies is OK anyway but they do grow out of it. My dd when she reached about 5 1/2 would often just walk away when it was on as it just got too repetititve.

We have a TV just used as a monitor to watch videos and DVDs which is a good idea. You can hide another tv some

My dd (nearly 3) totally adores TV and would watch it all day if allowed. We ration it and have a sort of schedule (early morning, sometimes 'quiet' time as she no longer naps) and some other occaisional times when I just desperately need to get her/me/dinner ready. It varies form none (not that often!) to 2 hours/day. I keep trying to get it down - but it is a fanfastic resource sometimes. We watch CBeebies or dvds. She does ask during the day - but she knows that if I say no that's it and it doesn't usually go on and on. I think having a sort of system and schedule is very helpful.

My dds watch babytv on sky. Dd1 used to watch cbeebies until babytv became available, and ever since we switched i can't bear to switch back to cbeebies. Babytv is such a relaxing channel, everything else seems so full on or commercialized.
I think my DDs watch very little tv during the week, maybe about 30 minutes per day at most for dd1 and close to none for dd2. on the weekend however they watch tons of tv in between anything that we do.....

i can't help it though, sometimes its great to be able to veg on the couch with something calming on the screen....

My dds watch babytv on sky. Dd1 used to watch cbeebies until babytv became available, and ever since we switched i can't bear to switch back to cbeebies. Babytv is such a relaxing channel, everything else seems so full on or commercialized.
I think my DDs watch very little tv during the week, maybe about 30 minutes per day at most for dd1 and close to none for dd2. on the weekend however they watch tons of tv in between anything that we do.....

i can't help it though, sometimes its great to be able to veg on the couch with something calming on the screen....

Hello all - thanks for all the input

It seems to me that the responses break down in a number of ways with a distinct difference of approach between those of us with more than one child and those of us with just the one.

Our DD2 is now 10 months old and has dramatically changed our take on most things to do with child rearing. In the main this is because the simple logistics of keeping two kids on a relatively even keel throughout the course of any given day is not straightforward.

I suspect that this is at the root of the issues with TV in our house. DD1, I suspect, uses it to block out her irritation and frustration at me or DW when we are tied up with DD2. That's just one aspect of her relationship with the box. She also does the classic "zoned out" vegging thing as well as exhibiting the anxiety I mentioned earlier up this thread that she might be missing something when it's off. I'm not sure that giving in to her demands when these are her motives is helpful. So we've taken the advice of many of you and instituted a schedule.

For the past three days the poor girl has had an implacable "no" whenever she's asked for TV out-of-hours. She's allowed two programmes or half-an-hour in the morning; and the same before tea and nothing in between. She seems to accept it if we deliver the "no' in a fairly cheerful way. So I'd say, guardedly, that it's working.

A couple of you mentioned having no TV at all. We have seriously considered this in the past and rejected it. there are things on that we all enjoy and we have found ways of limiting our viewing to those things.

Interestingly, when we posted about our proposed getting-shot-of-the-box idea we were almost flamed by a number of posters who took umbrage that anyone would try to undermine the status quo in such a repugnant fashion. I didn't really understand this until we embarked on this thread. I think what bothers people is the anxiety that I mentioned earlier. I think this is probably the most worrying aspect of our relationship with TV in that once you allow for this to happen you have allowed TV to control you and not the other way around. This, I think, is what I'm concerned to teach my kids: TV in just another medium for entertainment, not better or worse than any other. You need to be able to choose when you watch and why. It's NOT a lifestyle.

Thanks to everyone who's posted. It's nice to have started a thread that hasn't ended up in flame wars or in anyone deciding that they are "right" and that we should all realise that we've been "wrong" all this time. We're all doing the best we can and that's about all you can do.

Cheers

It all depends on how you use tv.

Does a child ask for a specific programme they like? or ask to watch TV if they are tired.

Or are you switching it on so you can get on with household chores, or personal stuff.

My DS asks for certain tv programmes or asks to put the TV on at the end of the day if he's particularly tired.

He plays when I do jobs around the house - often copies what I am doing. I think tv has its place, but not to babysit. Children learn to talk from hearing their parents talk to other people, each other and to them.

I'll get off my soapbox now.