Technology is everywhere. We are always connected. We even share the details of our lives on a daily basis with the whole world. Children are watching hours of television a week, and whether it's in the living room, family room, or their own bedroom, it's happening. I know when I was a kid and had a TV in my room, I would wake up in the middle of the night, turn my TV on, and watch cartoons instead of sleep! Yes, I got busted plenty of times. But the TV would come back after a few nights of being taken away.
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Comments (21)
My daughter is 2 and does not have a TV in her room. We haven't decided if/when she will have a TV of her own, but it definitely won't be anytime soon. We have a TV in our bedroom, but it's not even plugged in! It's only there because we don't have anywhere else to put it until we move into a larger place. I think it's strange when children fall asleep to a TV on a consistent basis, no matter what the age. I try not to judge other parenting styles, but I do find it to be odd.
Not a chance! Our kids dont even have toys (other then stuffies) in their rooms! Bedrooms are for sleeping.. Although.. we do have a tv in our bedroom where i catch up on my PVR shows in the morning before the kids get up.. Or if they get up really early they come hang out on our bed watching cartoons quietly.
They wont have computers in their rooms either.
My husband grew up falling asleep to the TV or radio every night. Now he can't sleep when its quiet (I have to have it quiet) and he falls asleep during movies.. I dont even remember the last time he made it through one. We have a TV in our daughters room. Its not plugged in. I can see a TV being used during the day in her room, but never at night.
My son has a tv in his room but it's not plugged in. Not quite sure when it will be. We don't have cable so it would be something I'd have to control regardless. He does watch netflix out in the living room but no more then two or three episodes of blues clues or something like that. He's 4 btw.
We have one old t.v. in our living room. It's analogue and HUGE. We don't have cable either (just got rid of it). We don't want a t.v. anywhere else because then we don't always know what our kids are watching and we like to watch t.v. as a family. Plus, t.v. can easily turn people into mindless zombies with no imagination so we like to keep the temptation at bay. :)
My kids are 6, 3, and 2, so there are no tvs in their bedrooms. My daughter does have her own boombox/cd player though. She loves music, and is almost always listening to a cd or Radio Disney when she's alone in her room. We have a tv in our bedroom, but it's hardly ever used. It's mostly just there to take up space haha. Maybe when my kids are older we'll consider the idea of letting them have their own tvs, but not right now.
I'll confess.
We have a small tv that is only hooked to a dvd player, nothing else. When we put the kids (6 and 3) to bed they get to choose 1 dvd and can watch it.
I do this because my husband and I need our time together. The kids aren't ready to go to bed at 7. But they are ready to start settling down in the dark, in their cozy pajamas, in bed. It, for us, makes bedtime hassle-free.
I have other battles. This one is a reward. If their room is not picked up by bedtime, they don't get the dvd. And we are comfortable and happy with this.
My husband and I do NOT have a tv in our bedroom. Our entertainment in there...is each other.
I think T.V. In a bedroom really takes away from quality time.
Adult or kid's bedroom it can really get in the way. I say T.V. In the play room for when you have company and want to put a kids movie on While entertaining the adults in the other room is cool.
I mean everyone can do what they want but it is a time suck.
~~LALA
I didn't have a TV in my room until I was eighteen. I got one because I moved out to university and my dad got it for me as a going-away-present because I was moving into a shared house which didn't have one already. I have it in my room now but it's not connected and I only use it for DVD's now. I wouldn't allow my kids to have one until they were at least sixteen. Little kids shouldn't be exposed to that much TV (in my eyes, anyway) - if you want to let them watch something, use the TV in the living room or put one in your room and let them use that occasionally. I would allow them to have computers in their rooms but I would control their access and only allow it to be turned on for a certain number of hours unless it was needed for schoolwork or until they proved they were mature enough to use the internet unsupervised (at say, sixteen or seventeen).
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - see, I think that's reasonable because you control it. You set it up and they can't just sit there and flick through TV channels and watch it for hours.
I think everyone here that commented are making too big of a deal out of it.
Never had a TV in my room, heck I was 19 when I finally got the internet in my room. I think children having a TV in their room sets up a bad precedent for when they get older, they will easily choose TV over homework, and TV over leisure reading. The lounge room or TV room is for watching TV, bedrooms are for sleeping, reading, and academic work. At least that's what my parents instilled into me and my siblings. Children and teens don't read enough these days. Get the children a book shelf, and fill it with age appropriate books. When they hit teens, make them read classic Greek literature, learn European languages, logic, and rhetoric. At lest the afore mentioned reading improves a person, TV does nothing to improve a person, unless its the History Chanel, damn that's fun to watch.
I never had a tv in my bedroom until I got married to a man who grew up falling asleep to the sound of his tv and that awful glow. Even worse, my kids DO have a tv in their room which was something I vowed would never happen.
It happened because we were given a very nice tv but already had one in the living room and our bedroom and my husband did not want to give away such a nice tv...so it ended up in my kid's room. The good thing is that it is not used very often. They get in trouble for turning it on without permission and never seem to remember that it's there at bedtime. I've changed my mind about having a tv in my kids room because it hasn't led to any problems, plus we have a remote control for it that only allows the kids to access child-friendly programming so I don't have to worry about them watching any 2am HBO programs. If it ever does become a problem, the tv is gone for good.
Too much tv can be bad but to say television in general turns kids into mindless zombies isn't true. My kids love to watch bubble guppies or team umizoomi and not only are they learning things that are in their school curriculum but then they like to use their imaginations and pretend they are team umizoomi going on different types of missions. They actually use what they see to fuel their imagination in play later on.
@hereinyourarms11@xanga - definitely. A well-monitored television doesn't have to be a problem.
@fadeing_hallucinations@xanga - I'm going to have to respectfully disagree that watching television, or having one in their room, sets a child up for academic failure or literary disinterest. My 6 year old daughter, as I type this is sitting in front of the tv watching Scooby Doo (she loves mysteries) while she paints her fingernails (kid-safe glitter polish). She loves television, it's true. But she also loves reading. She's doing her nails because she's so excited that this afternoon, we get to go to the library again - she's "getting ready."
She learned to love to read from me. I love reading. She watches me sitting in my corner chair curled up with a good book...and as she got older she started emulating my behavior - whether the TV was on or not.
She will sit down and read an entire Nancy Drew mystery book (they have some for younger kids now that are about 80 pages long) in one sitting and can't wait to get the next one. We were just at the library on Sunday. She read all 5 of her new books (all about 80 pages long) by the end of Monday. She did a lot of it while her brother was in the same room watching Ninjago.
I'm not bragging. I'm just saying that the television, even one in their room properly monitored, doesn't cause an educational deficit or even lessen imaginative play. My kids act like characters they see on tv, or read about in a book, when they are playing with their toys or running around outside.
I even venture to say that shoving Greek literature down a teenager's throat if they dislike it reduces their interest in reading period. That's what happened to my husband who now says he "hates" reading. He hated the books he had to read in high school, but had no choice in the matter. He is the one in the family who turns to the TV above all other forms of entertainment, and his upbringing was strict and his education was, too. He did not have a television in his room.
We can't blame technology for educational disinterest.
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - I specifically stated that having a TV in the child's room, specifically the childs room sets up a bad precedent. It is a well known fact that "most" children will if given the choice turn to TV over homework and leisure reading if left alone with an unsupervised TV in their room. TV can be quite a good thing when supervised by an adult for a child, and at least when in a central location a parent can see how much TV a under 18 year old is indulging in, however I think once a child reaches about 15 they should make their own viewing choices, and the parents should accept that, be it sport, drama, or even ballet.
I was lax in my wording of "make them read", I was thinking in my head, that they parent should, would enroll them in a school that specialized in classical education, and as a good parent, would provide them with copies of the works and scholarly articles at home. It is my view that a classical education can do no harm and every student is "forced" to read books in high school.
As far as a strict upbringing, I would never subject a child to what I consider "strict", I am of a liberal bent, and certainly would try to give a child, and choice a logical choice in most things when they reach an appropriate age. However as a parent I would have an opinion, and a financial obligation as to what school they attend, up until they finish high school.
Supervised parent child TV watching 2 - 8 years of age or whatever is great. I remember watching children's shows in the lounge room with my parents.
N.B: I do not plan to father any children. But I have always had strong opinions of what I would do if I ever had any. I sincerely hope I will make a good uncle someday, and at least be able to provide a supporting role appropriate to an uncle to my nieces and nephews.
I have a huge opinion on this one. My children had magnificent attention spans when it came to reading, doing simple math, and I had them reading well before they entered school. I read two studies, independent of one another last week, actually forwarded them to my 90 year old dad. They did MRI's on the brains of toddlers who'd either watched t.v. regularly during the day, watched some kind of electronic game, or required these kinds of activities to keep them happy. Then they compared them with the brains of adults with no mental disorders known to them, and to adults with clinical depression, and bingo, the babies brain waves mimicked those of the clinically depressed adults. I had already read a book a year ago about work being done at the University of Washington, on the Baby Einstein series, as it claimed to enhance learning. Well, those children who'd been lobbed with those videos were behind when it came to reading skills, and the Einstein people had to remove that from the label of their product. Bottom line: by six months you can and should be reading to your baby, showing the baby pictures that you are explaining yourself. They should have toys that require them to think, such as a very large box that they can color on, when old enough. Something that requires them to process, such as blocks to build with, and when appropriate enough, things like legos. Walking outside to explain yourself things that are growing, the colors, etc. A t.v. cannot take your place. If we didn't want to teach our children, prepare them for each year, especially as school gets closer, we should have thought of getting a dog.
I think I'd get a small one like I used to have, with a DVD player, & put it in their rooms on the weekend or when I want to watch something they can't but I don't think it should be in there 24/7. Maybe that will change when I actually have kids lol.
@Pollypinks@xanga - I'm with you on this one. There are no studies that show a positive outcome from TV watching, and imitation is NOT the same as imagination. I try to be realistic about it. I was allowed to watch 1 TV show every evening with my siblings when I was growing up (I don't think we had cable TV until I was around 5 or 6, so no TV before then), and I understand parent's like Sarahsmurfette who use it as part of a routine so mom and dad have some time alone, but personally I still feel like it's a waste of a child's brain. I think the problem is that caregivers have run out of imagination when it comes to challenging children's brains, so when we run out of ways to "entertain" kids, we turn on the TV so we feel like they are getting some stimulation while we take a break.
For myself, I'd like to try and do better for my kids, and avoid the artificial "stimulation" of TV. When my mom needed a break from teaching us and keeping us busy (she homeschooled all three of us from kindergarten through high school), we went off and played and entertained ourselves, sans TV! And I think our imaginations (and our health) were much better for it. I think the ability for a child to entertain themselves is the least appreciated skill we give our children these days (if we give it at all, unfortunately).
We live in a digital world. It isn't the same as it was 25 years ago when I was my daughter's age. We have to give our kids the skills to cope in the world they were born into, too.
Unless you're planning on your children living in a controlled community like the Amish, they'll need to have exposure to it. That's just the truth.
Nope! We have one TV and it's in the living room. My husband keeps hinting at a TV in our bedroom but I'm resisting. I already hate when "quality family time" turns into "let's be zombies" mindless TV time.
My husband and I are talking about turning the TV off for the summer. I think it's a great idea, but it won't last one week.