I have to admit something. I love TV. I grew up on TV and it was a comfort to me. It was a sense of calm, consistency and love in my home. I know, I know, I should have been reading. I was watching Carol Burnett. I digress....
These days it's not just TV bombarding kids it's Ipads, I touches, Wii, Nintendo, Movies, everything!!!!!! It's a lot. I have one of those kids that LOVES video games. Part of the reason is with all his surgeries we needed something for him to do during his down time. A life with no screen time is not right for our family due to circumstances beyond our control. Nevertheless I worry about the amount of screen time Landon has.
Right now Landon watches 2 hours of TV a day, and only gets to play Wii a few hours on the weekend.
Then I found this on Mashable:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) suggests kids ages two years old and younger be completely screen-free. All other children should get no more than two hours a day. That might prove difficult when households, on average, have eleven consumer electronic devices, according to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. That means TV sets, tablets, gaming devices, laptops, MP3 players and more.
Although not all parents seem to mind the constant stimuli. iYogi Insights found that parents are fine with their young kids spending two hours a day on iPads and about a quarter believe it's OK to give their child unlimited access. Almost all parents (92%) approve of their kids using the iPad as a homework tool, but 57% also admitted to using it to keep kids "out of their hair.""
Okay now that I really think about it Landon probably gets 4 hours of screen time a day including all of these things!!! CRAP. He wakes up and we put the TV on. After homework and bath we have TV on and sometimes he does Ipad. Coco on the other hand just wants to play in her room! Did I mention they also watch movies in the car on the way to school? HOLY HELL I HAVE TO REIGN THIS IN!!!!
So it seems that Mrs. TV has given birth to Mr. TV Jr. I'm going to start cutting back. How much screen time do you allow?
Stay Tuned. I mean...I'll post more on this later. Darn TV!
I'm reading this article on how to cut back!
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5 comments:
I am pretty strict on computer and video game screen time but I let TV watching be pretty unlimited on school days . The truth is...we really try to keep busy ding other things so that they stay away from too much electronic stimulation.
I LOVE TV too....I really do but I think kids are too addicted to screens these days in general.
I've been through this same battle in my head that you are going through....many times over. And I am just like you in that I grew up with TV and to this day, I LOVE MY TV TIME!! For my kids though, I finally decided that it IS more calm in my house if they have less screen time (TV, video games, iTouch, iPAD, etc) so here's what we do. For my boys, ages 8 and 11, they get 30min-1hr of TV time (only) on school days. On the weekends they can have 2 hours of total screen time but then we let them bring the iTouch/iPad/Kindle if we go somewhere and they want something to do while riding, etc...
It was HARD to get used to the school day limit in the beginning but I just saw such a positive difference in the kids and now they don't even expect it so there are no more struggles about it. Hope that helps!
I know. I LOVE TV too! I try not to say it too much around the family since I am always trying to get them away from it! If they watched Full House & Little House on the Prairie I'd be okay but my husband has been known to watch some crap.
When my daughter was in preschool I really controlled how much she watched and it did help a bit but she likes to watch tv now so maybe that backfired. My 2 rules that have been constant from the beginning have been: no TV before school- things just run smoother for us that way & no TV's in the bedrooms. Right there I'm limiting at least a bit.
We haven't gotten to the point where she uses the computer for tons of homework but she does use my husband's ipad to play games and I just try to pay attention to her and if I think she's been on it too long I tell her to turn it off and go do something else. Luckily, she's pretty good about doing that.
Bottom line, I think we all need to decide what works for our families and make sure our kids are well rounded. :)
I meant to say above that I let TV be unlimited on NON school days. On school days, we don't have time for TV:)
Kim
My daughter is hearimg impaired and while she was in kindergarten and elementary school- coming home from school she was so worn out by concentrating on "hearing" she just wanted to "zone out" and watch TV with the captioning on. I did allow it. She did her homework as well as extra curriculars...It just was a stress reliever. (I know that sounds bad). She ended up graduating high school with a perfect GPA.
-Linda,ny
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