TV: Magic Box or Box of Trouble?
Is TV really *that* bad for kids? Come. Share your thoughts. (Who are we kidding? Like you really need an invitation.)
Editor’s note: Today’s feature is the next installment in our parenting column written by two sets of Richmonders: Jorge and Patience Salgado (veteran parents of four gorgeous children), and Ross and Valerie Catrow (total parenting rookies who have only been doing this “raising a child thing” for a few months). Check back fortnightly to watch them discuss/agree/disagree/throw down over all kinds of parenting issues, Richmond-related and beyond.
Today’s question: How do you feel about kids and TV?
The Salgados
By the time a child leaves elementary school, he or she will have seen 8,000 murders on television. My husband’s response? “Well, what kind of murders are we talking here, are we including cartoon murders?” he said.
“Ummm, I don’t know what cartoons you are watching, but, dude, even Tom and Jerry don’t actually kill each other.” This sort of humor makes parenting fun and interesting for us but seriously, this statistic is just scary. Don’t you think? 79% of people believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem. So I’m wondering, who lets their kids watch all these murderous shows or even the news for that matter? Am I lost in my PBS Pollyanna life and job? Tell me RVANews readers, are your toddlers kicking back a cold one and watching any of the ten CSI shows with you?
Before I get all self-righteous and climb on the awesome parenting soap box I’ve constructed, the next statistic blows in. The average child watches between 3-5 hours of television a day. Ouch! If I’m honest, we are total bingers at our house. I mean, I could easily watch 6 hours of Kim Possible with my kids, no problem. There may have even been a few times that Jorge and I watched 10 hours of Weeds or Six Feet Under only stopping for bathroom breaks and to pay the pizza delivery guy. All of this happening while we completely ignored the children, of course.
The television has served as babysitter in moments of desperation, and by desperation I mean the need to take the Facebook quiz which will tell me who my celebrity look-a-like is. After the binge comes the purge, and so then there may be an entire summer without the magic box. This time has come for us and surprisingly, my children have actually agreed to this proposition. We did it a few years back and the first week was brutal. Once we survived a month, all kinds of lovely things started to happen. The house was cleaner, we played outside more, we wanted less stuff, it was good for everyone.
The number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their kids? 3.5 This has to be the biggest motivating statistic yet. Television or no television, parents have to do better than that. We’ll leave the computer obsession for another day. Baby step, baby steps.
The Catrows
As we have an infant at this point, we can only approach this question armed with our own childhood experiences and what we plan to do with our kid when/if it becomes an issue.
Both of my parents worked, and my brother, sister, and I were the epitome of latchkey kids, left to our own devices (within reason) until 5:00 rolled around and we heard the tires of my mom’s car crunching on the driveway. Before any of us could drive, our entertainment options were left to reading, playing outside, and watching television. Which one do you think we picked? So, I grew up watching a lot of TV. A. Lot. Most of it was probably highly inappropriate for my age as well, considering my brother was almost six years older than me. Meanwhile, Ross, was definitely NOT a latchkey kid but also grew up watching tons of TV. Tons! In fact, he can’t remember not having a TV in his bedroom.
And yet, here we are. Neither one of us violent. Neither one of us is promiscuous. We like to think we’re both reasonably intelligent and socially adpet. We departed our TV-soaked childhoods unscathed and morally intact. Granted, different time, different programming, but our experiences have definitely shaped our opinions about TV when it comes to our own offspring.
Our approach to most things in life is “everything in moderation” (except when it comes to watching hours and hours of Battlestar Galactica or eating Oreos). I doubt we want our kid to watch as much TV as we did growing up, but we’re not going to limit his exposure so much that it becomes a forbidden fruit of sorts for him. I feel like the more we squawk “NO TV!!!!” at him, the more likely he’ll be to spend hours upon hours at friends’ houses staring at that glowing box with trickles of drool coming out of his mouth.
I like to think that we’ll do our best to incorporate a balance, meaning that TV time must be paired with equal or greater amounts of time spent running around outside getting dirty or staying inside reading, building forts out of pillows, and what have you. Like with anything with your kid, you need to keep yourself aware of what’s going on. If you choose to let your kid watch TV, you need to make sure you know *what* they’re watching and being exposed to. And don’t kid yourself: that goes for books, too. I used to teach upper elementary school, and you’d be surprised (shocked and maybe even appalled) at some of the scandalous things going on in the world of youth fiction. But are you going to keep your kid away from books now?
I didn’t think so.
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Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
My Uncle and Aunt are raising my cousins with no TV in the house. Yea Yea those kids are smart, yes their all going to college and yes the 1st one to go to college even got a scholarship to do so. Big Deal. But you don’t want any of these kids on your team when you are playing Scene it.
In our house it’s home work first then TV. After a long day at school / work I think it’s okay for us to just veg and watch TV for awhile. The Weekends we stay so busy it’s not really an issue.
The only problem that relates to TV in our house is with programming. Sometimes Sponge Bob isn’t really for kids. Thankfully, my kids have stopped watching it. But seriously doesn’t it seem like what is now PG-13 was rated R when we were kids. and it seems like they only come out with 1-2 PG rated movies a year??
It seems like TV has just become too easy. I remember watching an hour of Tom and Jerry, and getting so excited and confused that I had to go outside and run around. That could have just been my overly analytical mind, but cartoons like that really changed my way of thinking, and totally in a good way. It is the same with old Nintendo games. I could only play Metroid for so long before I had to leave the room. It is as if games were designed to be impossible so that you had to get physical exercise in between plays to cope with the confusion. I think a balance between the two is a good thing though, but with the amount of total crap on TV now, it is harder to support that stance any more. Having said that, I feel like my TV is on way too much now than ever, and totally by my own hand. I find it helpful for practicing repetitive rhythms, as it is easy to kind of zone out on while practicing, but the more I think about it, the stupider it seems.
I feel like there are some shows that kids definitely have no business seeing. I mean, Family Guy is hilarious, but 7-year-olds probably shouldn’t be watching it. Maybe their parents think, “Hey, it’s a cartoon! It’s ok!” Who knows?
I agree that some kids’ shows now are crappy, but there is also some quality programming out there. My personal favorite is Between the Lions on PBS. That is some good stuff, teaching kids all kinds of language skills.
PBS Kids has some great kids’ shows that I have no problem with my children watching. There’s the big dog of Sesame Street, then there’s Curious George (lessons in science and math), Sid The Science Kid (lessons in science), Martha Speaks (vocabulary), Mama Mirabelle (nature & animals), Arthur (social skills), and some other shows that focus on basic letters and spelling. It’s really interesting to see how PBS has managed to work out how its different shows can provide different learning skills and subjects in one bloc of programming, and I see it as a neat way to supplement preschool and what they learn from us.
As far as other shows go…they’ll watch episodes of Clone Wars that I have “cleared” as being OK (not too scary, low/no real body count), and I love having them watch BBC Top Gear with me. We’re a TV family, there’s no two ways about it, but we also read to them every night at bedtime (in fact, the prospect of no stories before bed leads to anguish) and get out to see the world.
As I said, it might just be me, but cartoons like Tom and Jerry have really shaped my life. Ever since I was a kid, I have been obsessed with puzzles and complex networks, which I think I can completely attribute to my interest in the insanely overly complex traps that Tom and Jerry would set for each other. As ridiculous as it may sound, I think it really sparked my interest in linguistics, and ultimately helped me to land my job as a translator. It is amazing to me that I gained more linguistic interest and a greater vocabulary from watching such cartoons than I did from watching Reading Rainbow…although I do love Reading Rainbow, and my brother and I definitely still tell people that Levar Burton is our cousin.
PBS is the best! (and not just because I work there) George Shrinks was always my favorite…
I let my child watch about 45 minutes of TV in the morning and about 45 minutes when she gets home from daycare at night. (Yes, daycare! Imagine all of the horrible damage I’m doing by forcing her into such child-care!) She’s in a class with other kids all day learning and playing with no TV. I don’t see the big deal in letting her veg out in front of the TV for a while. However, we stick to PBS or Noggin – that’s it. I’m so impressed w/ PBS’s programming. And on the weekends I limit her TV exposure and make sure we have lots of outside time. However, if it was up to her she’d watch TV allllllll day.
I do believe that TV programming is responsible for desensitizing children to rude behavior and violence, though, and that’s a big problem.
Our television is not turned on at all during the week unless the children are asleep. Perhaps that’s why the 8-yr-old asks to watch as soon as she gets off the bus on even the most beautiful Fridays. When they do watch, it’s PBS or Disney. The box is in the basement/playroom, so it’s conveniently out of sight/out of mind. Tivo is my friend and I watch a few shows later in the evenings, but not daily. I think we are a surprisingly TV-free family. I’m glad about that.
Our kids are TV-free however I do allow them to watch Redskins’ games with me during football season (although the commercials are so completely inappropriate, this year I’ll be DVRing and forwarding through the ads). My husband and I watch TV at night after the kids are in bed. We watch one kid DVD a month as a family and the kids have some DVDs that they watch in the car on long trips. They are absolutely allowed to indulge in media when visiting friends or cousins (when age-appropriate). They don’t seem to have a social handicap compared to their TV-watching peers. They know that every family runs things a different way and this is just what works for our family.
PBS is good late at night 2am-6am, reruns of some good stuff. People pay more attention to TV and the internet than anything.
What kind of shows are kids watching that would expose them to 8,000 TV murders by the end of elementary school?? Seriously, I want to know… By the time a kid reaches the end of elementary school, he/she would have watched about 10,000 hours of TV, and in those 10,000 hours there were 8,000 murders?? Yikes.
Jorge, I’m guessing those are loose definitions of murder. I mean, after all, Bambi and Snow White could qualify, and so could every single episode of Star Wars (especially if you count all the droids that eat it).
Yo Gabba Gabba on the Noggin/NickJr. channel. Our baby loves that show. We only sit him in front of it when we want to have our hands free to eat our dinner. Check it out. Really good stuff.