what are your rules around watching TV...

[mummy23x]

Do you let your children sit for hours in the morning after they have woken watching TV for example from 7.30 am to 10.00 - 11.00 am??

I have a DS1 aged 7 DSS aged 3 DS2 aged 6 months and another baby due in October. Although we do things as a family, I feel the children excluding 6 month old, should be able to entertain themselves without feeling like TV is there main source of entertainment...

I'd be interested to hear how other mums and dads do this..... :)

One advantage of no television is that I can take them on extremely long distance plane journeys - have done since they were three - and they will sit spell bound and silent the entire journey watching whatever is on the screen. makes them brilliant travel companions!

Don't think this has anything to do with the fact you've not allowed them to watch TV. I can do this with my children too but they've been allowed to watch DVDs and TV?

Mummysmellsofsick - that clip was interesting!

Snap kaekae - DD is exactly the same, she travels brilliantly, always has, but will happily just read or draw, & she too has always had TV - I realised early on, that so long as TV doesn't get used too often as "the babysitter" it really can be educational - the day DD came down stairs & accurately counted all the steps - 16 - she was 1 (early talker & walker) we hadn't tried to teach her this as thought her too young, she'd leant it from TV

You're right, Kaekae, they would probably be as mesmerised by the plane TV screen if they always had access to it. They just can't wait to get on an airplane - going anywhere far away - simply because of the dvd player on the back of the chair...

I've noticed that because my children have no expectation of a TV being on turned on they don't badger to have it turned on when we are in/at hotels/friends/relatives - while often at my friend's houses the parents are having a battle with the children about TV, particularly when they are tired at the end of the day.

Also we don't see adverts, and don't have to deal with all that tie in merchandise. I'm really pleased about this because ever since seeing disney movies my children want every single disney product in the shop... cannot imagine what it would be like if this were amplified to include peppa pig and in the night garden and dora the explorer.

I cannot stand the slack faced moronic look kids get when they watch television. Mine get it in bars and restaurants where there's a TV attached to the wall (though maybe if they watched more of it they wouldn't seize on every opportunity they get to have a look?).

As little as possible and never on pre school or as background.

Mine are teenagers now thus pre CBBC toddlers.
I think it must be really hard to restrict toddlers' viewing now. ** in my day it went on for Tellytubbies and then off again because there was nowt on. THe schedulers were allies rather than undermining parental attempts to restrict viewing!

I don't think DS (5) has watched TV since we got a wii. He is in a weird inbetween age - he finds cbeebies a bit babyish but cbbc is too old. I don't like him watching stuff with loads of ads.

All screen time (wii/computer/ipod) is limited to 2 hours a day and none in the mornings unless he has had breakfast and got dressed.

I don't watch telly much either - I turn it on to watch a specific programme and then turn it off again. Radio 4 on the other hand is on pretty much all day long ...

We don't have a license. Never have. DS watches movies but not everyday and sometiems just half a movie before dinner. Computer time is max. 30 min. The day he is at the computer, there is no movie. And viceversa. Can't afford an I-Pad or I-Phone so that's not an option. He doesn't have a games console. There is no screen time after dinner: it's used for either reading, music or time together. If he wakes up early in the morning he reads, builds Lego or writes stories.

It may seem a bit radical to some. But everyone who comes to stay with us loves the silence, the harmony, life without the TV noise and DS's ability to use his time and never be bored. So we'll just keep it like this till maybe secondary school...Not watching TV may become a social issue there and I don't want that for him.

I heard about a Canadian study ( sorry can't reference it as I heard about it on radio) where they studied two groups of children, one group that had watched lots of TV in the first two years of life and one group that had watched none.

Even taking into allowance other factors (such as parental interest in education etc) they found that those children who had not watched TV were doing significantly better at school aged 10 than those who had watched lots. This makes sense to me as lots of neural pathways are being laid down during those first years and learning needs to involve lots of motor movement. Passively sitting watching TV meant the children would not be developing the same neural pathways as those who were more actively playing.

sarahfreck thank you - you've just taken years of guilt off my shoulders.

Extremely limited television viewing, restricted to watching dance or music, no adverts at all. Sometimes DD will be sat next to DH when he is watching one of his boring documentaries. We don't use the TV for general entertainment and will only sit down to watch programmes that we specifically want to see, such as Being Human, Doctor Who, etc. when those series are on. Usually we watch these on catch-up, after DD has gone to bed.

sarahfreck - a link to the paedetrician on TED talks, discussing these studies is made further back up the thread. It's a 15 minutes video saying more or less the same thing (and linking television viewing in the first three years - and specifically modern, frenetic television programmes and disjointed snatches of images like those in baby einstein - to attention problems in later life. not with Mister Rogers though... he was slow and had a coherent narrative and didn't cause any problems. it's the specific kind of fast paced, disconnected, jump around, in-yer-face TV which is apparently the problem.)

Sarahfreck that same study is in Mummysmellsofsick s link & it does make for a very interesting watch,

but to me it say's that other input with DCs counteracts the negative effect too much TV can have - which would make sense with us - though DD didn't have a lot TV in early years, she did have some, but balanced with a lot of 1 on 1, reading crafts etc etc - she is now 9 & is considered to be exceptionally bright

Glad you found the link interesting rockinhippy and congrats on the exceptionally bright DD . I agree there are always other factors in play, and it's never a good idea to think one thing- eg watching or not watching TV can solve all your parenting problems.

We tried for a "no TV whatsoever" rule up to 2 years old. (Having no physical TV helped with this, we're eventually going to get a projector linked to a digital box but that will be adult-operated too. For now it's laptop/ipad.) We would never have TV as background noise ourselves, and morning noise is only ever the radio.

At 18 months we relaxed the rule to ten minutes a day, on internet demand-TV (so no adverts) and always sitting with one of us on the sofa, so we talked with DS while the programme was on - to comment on the story, help him think what was happening (and sometimes what's going to happen next) and reinforce the 'messages' that toddler TV sends - kindness, teamwork, sharing. The only shows he watches now are Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, Pingu. Once or twice Roary the Racing Car. When we see things in shops that are franchised from the show, he never knows to ask for them (I think because of avoiding the adverts) and if he did I feel no need whatsoever to go with his "choices".

Now 2.8, DS almost never asks for TV. In the mornings he plays with his toys or 'reads' books (flicks through them reciting parts of the story that he has memorised through repeated readings by us!). In the evenings if I'm cooking he gets his ikea stool and 'helps' which mainly consists of asking what I'm doing and whether he can have a piece of whatever I'm chopping.

Totally agree with whoever said that it will become important that he's in the same cultural landscape as his peers. They have Peppa Pig stuff at nursery, and Elmo/Elmer is starting to be a significant topic of conversation. But together we watch things like the F1 racing, Frozen Planet and other nature programmes, and we search for videos of animals / brushing teeth songs / etc on youtube.

DS1 (2.5) used to live for Cbeebies. In someways it was great, he learned to count as a result, and say lots of new words. In other ways, I feel very guilty for having allowed so much of it. probably not helped by the arrival of DS2 10 months ago, when it was on all the time.

It's not everyday as he either at the childminders or nursery 3 days a week and Cbeebies finishes at 7, so is often off by the time we are in and settled.

4 days a week I take him the park, visit friends or soft play for most of the day so maybe 2 hours on those days. I am guilty of leaving it on in the background. He finds it quite relaxing so we will use it a lot on quiet days. It doesn't appear to adversely affect his mood.

I try to do 2-3 activities on wet weather days when it is off, such as painting, making cookies or mash potato (odd, but he likes to mash!). I suppose my only rule is NO commercials. He is like a sponge and wouldn't want him singing jingles at me. Oh and it goes off if that bloody annoying woman and the pandas comes on.

He lost interest recently and started turning it off himself because his obsession has transferred to the laptops/iPods/iPhones/iPads which he is exceptional at operating and surfs YouTube for Peppa Pig and Numberjacks. BUT I have started to limit this severely to 30 min a day as his behaviour has gone rapidly downhill since using them. Tantrums, screaming when they are taken away, whining etc.

Glad you found the link interesting rockinhippy and congrats on the exceptionally bright DD . I agree there are always other factors in play, and it's never a good idea to think one thing- eg watching or not watching TV can solve all your parenting problems

Thanks mummysmellsofsick :) - it was particularly interesting to me, as we did use the Baby Einstein DVDs in the early days, though having been given a pile of them I soon realised that most of them drove me nuts - for exactly all the reasons mentioned in the link - so I got rid of most of them & only kept 2, which were slower & with a much more laid back classical sound track

back then the press on those was pretty good & as I took ill when DD was 4/5 moths old, which meant DH going back to work & working long hours, so it was only me looking after her most of the time & part of my health problems meant I had lost my voice, almost completely for 6 months, so where as I was very much in the camp of promising myself DD wouldn't have any TV when small, we were worried about her learning to speak, so gave in to TV - needed have, turns out she was way ahead of her peers :)

So I personally don't think its about allowing DCs to watch, more about WHAT they are allowed to watch & what else its balanced with :)

We son't put the TV on on weekday mornings and afterwards it depends. Two afternoons are straight to activities so nothing but if we are at home then they usually get an hour Wii/Laptop/Telly (tends to be the 1st two). We have a no Wii/computer rule for after dinner. At weekends they can get up and watch TV and we're more relaxed about everything but agree with previous posters, if the TV is on it must be to watch something and not as background noise.

rockinhippy nice to know a bit of baby Einstein did no harm. I've become a bit over worried and started counting seconds per frame on TV since watching that talk! But I'm a great believer in not rejecting things that are part of the collective cultural landscape just because they're a bit meaningless and morally/ culturally/ educationally bankrupt. Being too saintly always casts a shadow.

Actually, the study I heard about was a different one. I think this one here:
www.livescience.com/6408-watching-tv-age-2-linked-host-problems-10.html

This wasn't to do with the type of programme (which may have been mostly fast-paced) of course but just the number of hours.

I used to be really uptight and limit the dcs' viewing.

Now I don't, really. If I think they've been watching for too long, I'll tell them to turn it off, and they always do quite willingly. We never have struggles about it.

But what I think is more significant is that they turn it off themselves without being asked. They can limit their own watching. (That's not true of the computer, which I am strict about, and we don't have any games consoles or smart phones).

My dh was brought up in a tv-free household and insisted that we had one when we had kids. I grew up avidly watching it, but now I'm not interested, I hardly ever look at it.

There's quite a lot of one-upmanship about how little you let them watch. My BIL once claimed that his kids only ever watched one episode of Trumpton a day. The mystery was that they knew all the names of the characters in Night Garden. Funny that - what could have been happening?

Nimin not saying this was the case with your BIL, but you'd be surprised of how much they pick in school! My DS, without ever watching TV, knows a lot of programs and characters from his peers talking in school. Same goes for XBOX games he doesn't have and lots of other stuff. He sounds like an expert on things he has never touched. They are like sponges. They really live in their present. Unlike me...buried in the past, pathetically nostalgic. [blulsh]

Thank you mummysmellofsick.... I allowed my DS1 to watch baby einstein at around 6 months!! He was my first and I genuinely that it was beneficial now on the other hand I know different and my DS1 was the child who expected more from a "Farmyard" trip...very active little boy, you could almost see his brain spinning round he just wouldnt sit still EVER! having said that he is alot calmer now. I feel that if I allow perhaps one movie a week for the children on a weekend that will be sufficient, we dont have live TV anymore, so cartoons are out of the question, I totally agree with the clip you posted, that children benefit a lot more from real interaction that staring at tv screen watching thomas and ben ten for example, yes some tv can be educational but perhaps only when an adult is watching with them and they talk about what is going on etc...

Mine are nearly four and nearly two.

I allow 20 mins/half an hour after lunch. Then between 45 mins/an hour before tea.

They don't watch much at weekends.

Hardboiled, that might have been the case, but they were 3 and 1 at the time.

I did notice during that conversation that SIL was looking suspiciously busy all of a sudden...

I know they pick up loads in school - but it's also important to know what people are on about. The reason we have a tv at all is because DH was so isolated at his school because he didn't know anything about telly.

nimim I can see exactly what you mean with you being an avid TV watcher and your husband never having one....I think the key is balance along with NEVER EVER making a big deal out of it...Ive found if you make a big deal out of anything with a child they will 99% of the time go the opposite way whether it be instantly or at some stage of their live...ive found that by own experience and hearing alot of people saying the same thing... whether it be food, religion, behaviour, rules etc so I maybe wrong but balance is essential