Kids and Television

Page Updated on July 28, 2007

TV IS NOT EVIL! I repeat, TV is not evil.

Television is a tool. It should not rule our lives nor should it be abandoned. Your kids will watch TV. Even if you throw out the television, they will watch it at somebody else's house. It is up to us to control what they watch and how much they watch and give them the courage to say "I'm not allowed to watch this" or "I don't want to watch this" when they're at somebody else's home.

Controlling How You Use the TV

Try to actively sit down with your child and watch a non-violent, G-rated, educational program together, talking about what you see and hear, asking questions, singing along, and so forth. It is fine to also watch shows that don't seem educational at all. Just ensure that you agree with what those uneducational shows are about and how they are presented because your kids will learn things from those shows even if they are designed only to entertain. (I'm amazed by the impressive vocabulary and moral lessons my 2-year-old learns from Sponge Bob Square Pants.)

You should not use your television as a babysitter all day, every day. Yes, you can use it to keep your kids occupied when you just don't have the time or energy left to keep up with them. Just try to turn it off most of the time, so your kids will learn that there is more to life than TV.

The television is not an acceptable fix for "I'm bored." In fact, a great way to handle "I'm bored" is to give your child chores to do. He/she will quickly find something to cure the boredom blues, and you'll rarely hear that dreaded whine again.

You may use television (DVDs and video on hard drives) to entertain your kids on long car trips (we let them watch one movie on any trip longer than 3 hours). You should not use it to entertain your kids on short trips, such as between home and the grocery store. They need to look out the window and see the world.

You should never pull your child out of another activity just so they can sit down to watch "their favorite show" (if you don't tell them it's on, they'll probably just keep on playing and won't even realize that they missed it). Children's lives should not be scheduled around television schedules. If they truly love a certain show, record it and play it back at your family's convenience.

Don't have a TV in every room. Have one television set for the entire family and create a schedule. It will force your kids to choose better shows and work with others.

Controlling What They Watch and When

When the television became a part of society, there weren't many channels to choose from, and the content rarely appealed to children, so instead of changing the channel, children simply went outside to play (imagine that). We eventually started to get more channels, but our selection still was limited in comparison to the selections we have today, and we had to actually get up to change the channel, which discouraged channel flipping. When the remote came out, channel flipping began, but we still didn't have many channels to flip through, so we would have to put up with what was on or turn off the TV. When cable gave us 100+ channels, it became easier to turn the channel instead of turning the television off because we finally had a vast selection. We would flip through the channels, watching each one for a short time until we decided we didn't like what was on and flipped again, but by the time we finished flipping, 30 minutes had passed, and it was time for the next show, so we would flip some more. Today we have on-screen listings instead of television guides, and we can just decide what we want to watch ahead of time and program our television systems to turn on the show when it's on or record it for us, so we can watch it later, but many of us still flip out of habit.

The latest television systems allow us to not only plan what and when we'll watch, but to eliminate the flipping, we can also program our systems to ONLY allow certain shows on at certain times. I can set my system to only allow a specified number of hours of viewing per day. Knowing that I have a time limit forces me to consider what I want to watch before I turn on the television because I don't want to waste my time flipping. I can also program in when my system will turn on and turn off, when to play background music from one of the music stations, and when to play a television show. And the best part, I can use a password to lock in those settings, so Junior can't change them.

They can complain all they want, but when they're exhausted from their whining and finally give up, the TV still runs through the program as I have instructed it to do. The program doesn't give in to whines.

Making Good Show Choices

• No Scary Stuff

  Any child under the age of eight should not be allowed to watch scary movies or shows, even those that have been made for kids, because their minds are not developed enough to allow them to differentiate between reality and fantasy. They may think that the monster in that scary kids movie is real. (I was terrified by the Sea Hag in Popeye and the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz during most of those young years. I can still remember all the nightmares I used to have about them.) Older kids can watch scary stuff as long as it is age appropriate. "Poltergeist," "the Blair Witch Project," "the Exorcist," etc. are NOT age appropriate no matter how cool their friends say the movies are and tease your child for not seeing them. If it's rated PG-13, don't let your 10 year old see it. If it's rated R, don't let your 15 year old see it unless you're sitting right there with them and fully aware of how your child is responding to the show.

• No Gratuitous Sex

  Children will eventually find out what sex is and all the things that go with it (I'm a fan of teaching them early on, such as age 5, where babies come from), but care should be taken when allowing children to watch media with sexual content. What you believe is appropriate sexual information for your child is a decision that you will have to make. Some families speak freely about sex while others don't even utter the word and whisper when they use euphemisms. It's fine to talk about body parts or the naked body at any age; we all have the same stuff, and it's more scientific curiosity than sexual. It's fine to let even a toddler see two adults in a loving relationship kissing passionately (even their parents), provided that the passion doesn't involve anything too passionate (like making out on the top of the kitchen table). Kissing is something humans do when they love each other, and it's a part of a healthy relationship. Groping and making out is acceptable material for teenagers, but I would stay away from blatant sex scenes. (The teenagers will probably find ways to watch those blatant sex scenes, even the really graphic, pornographic ones, but that's why you talk to your kids about sex first.)

• No Gratuitous Violence

  Toddlers and preschoolers should not watch anything with violence, even kid shows that have the good guys beating up the bad guys. They tend to copy everything they see, and that includes hitting, wrestling, and so forth. If your school aged child really gets into acting out scenes from television shows and movies, avoid having them watch such shows as well. Pre-teens and teenagers often are attracted to violent movies. Just make sure you are aware of the level of violence as well as the context of violence. A war movie that contains violence is acceptable if it teaches the child history. ("Grandpa was in that war. I wonder if he had to deal with seeing horrible things like that.") Movies like "Starship Troopers" or "the Crow" on the other hand may be a bit too much, so make sure you preview it first and watch it with them if you decide to let them see it. Again, if your pre-teen or teen seems to really get into movies like that, try to limit them.

• Watch the Language

  True, a word is just a word. It can't hurt you (even if I'm not rubber and you're not glue), but it can be rather unattractive to see a three-year-old using foul language or a teenager using racial slurs. Kids of any age pick up on everything they hear other people say, even people who are in television shows and movies. Limit their exposure if you don't want to hear such words coming out of your baby's mouth.