TV and Children

You cannot raise responsible children unless you come to grips with what else is raising them. Television and the Internet are the electronic teachers of your children.

TV - the sobering facts:

• The average child spends 23 hours per week watching TV.
• Children spend more than twice as much time watching TV as they do on homework.
• The average number of TV sets in a household with children is 2.7, and increasing steadily.
• More than half of American children have a TV in their bedrooms. Most adolescents watch TV in their room and almost one-third of preschool-age children have sets in their bedrooms.
• During the 7-8 p.m. time slot (once defined as the family hour), 80 percent of TV shows use four-letter words, and 60  percent refer to sex. 
• During prime time, 74 percent of all TV shows contain sexual content, rarely making any reference to personal responsibility risk. 
• Children are exposed to an estimated 10,000 food advertisements per year, mostly on TV. 
• Less than 25 percent of parents believe their children watch too much TV.

What TV teaches your child:

• Public television in particular strives to teach positive values. At its best, commercial TV can inspire and educate.
•  It can expose children to people from different ethnic groups and show different kinds of families. 
•  TV nourishes a culture of disrespect. People are continually dissing one another and disrespect is the source of most of the humor in comedies, and most of the tensions in dramas. 
•  TV portrays parents as incompetent and befuddled, and children are wise (and smart-alecky) beyond their years. 
•  TV teaches instant gratification, especially through commercials, where billions of dollars are spent to attract children and adults and to make them buy a product now. 
•  TV teaches that happiness is having things. 
•  TV represents sex without commitment or consequences, either emotional or physical. 
•  TV desensitizes children to the effects of violence on human lives. It portrays aggression as no big deal.

What you can do:

•  Don't permit your children to have a TV in their bedrooms.  This encourages isolation from the rest of the family and it is more difficult to monitor the programs they watch. If your child has a TV in his or her room, consider setting a date several months away after which it will be removed. Be prepared for a major conflict.
•  Decide in advance with your children which TV shows they will watch each week. Make sure the TV is off when one of   those shows is not on. Don't let the TV stay on just to provide background sight and sound.  
•  Utilize reviews and parent guides to learn about the content of TV programs. 
•  Watch TV shows with your children to see what they are like and how your children are reacting to them. Discuss these shows with your children.
•  Turn the TV off during mealtimes.
•  Do not use TV programs as a babysitter. 
•  Experiment with TV-free nights and use the time for family activities. 
•  Set a good example in your own TV watching, being deliberate about what you watch and don't watch.

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From Take Back Your Kids: Confident Parenting in Turbulent Times by William J. Doherty, Ph.D.,
copyright (c) 2000. Used by permission of SORIN BOOKS, an imprint of Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Ind., 1-800-282-1865 ext. 3.