One of the biggest debates in parenting techniques is the number of hours of TV a child should view each day. There is at one extreme the set of parents who feel that watching any TV at all should be banned because it causes children to lose creativity and become zombies. They wait like addicts for the next programme to get their next fix.
At the other end of the spectrum are the most permissible parents who simply hand over the remote to the kid and leave the room. The child is free to watch what he likes, for as long as he likes. The logic being if he finds it is not denied he will lose interest in it after some time and curtail his own viewing. Saying “No” will only make him all the more adamant to watch TV.
Between the two extremes there are many variations with being allowed to watch 1 hour a day to 10 hours a day. Being allowed to watch only educational programmes to just about anything the child fancies. Being allowed to only switch on the TV in the presence of parents to watching TV on their own. There are many permutations and combinations and no one is absolutely right or absolutely wrong.
Just as no two individuals are absolutely alike, no two kids are. So while watching an hour of TV satisfies one child the other one might want to watch three hours daily. What works well with one child may not work as well with the other. Ask any parent who tries to make both his kids do the same thing! Personality differences in twins show up as early as six months of age. The debate is endless and here’s my opinion.
Children below 5 years are like sponges. They take in everything around them and then shape their personalities with that data that is available to them. So it makes sense to monitor what they are watching. They make out the similarities and differences between what they watch on TV and what happens in real life. SO the quality of programmes they watch should concern you more than the number of hours they watch TV.
On a school day Rehaan watches one fifteen minute programme after he has finished getting ready and is eating his breakfast before leaving for school. When he returns, we first finish the home work, then change and again settle down for some TV as we eat our mid morning snack. Then we watch about two hours of TV as we wait for Dad and have lunch. After a little rest we go down and play and evening we don’t get to watch TV of our choice as it is Dad’s turn, so most often we head off to our toy room and play till dinner time.
After dinner we watch whatever aircraft programme or car race that Dad is watching and then we sleep. I believe on an average school day he watches about 3 hours of TV…and I am fine with that. Naturally when one is stuck at home the full day the number of hours doubles, but since there is little else for him to do, I content my self by switching him from one educational programme to another, making sure he learns something from each serial.
Posted by Shilpi on January 24, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I am just dead against TV especially for tender minds who are barely 2 or 3 year old. Infact we don’t have a TV at home. Its been a year now with no TV. My son does watch cartoons/rhymes CD but on the laptop which i can control and lock away in the cupboard. I limit the watching time to max half hour at a stretch. We both look/read books together. He is just 2 so he looks and listens to the stories i tell him. Also he loves painting and singing.
Posted by Ashish on January 23, 2009 at 5:45 pm
From my own experiance I know that a child adjusts fairly easily to a life with much less or no tv. While the same child adjusts very easily to a life with TV….. If he or she have adequate time with parents, creative hobbies etc regulated TV watching is fair enough, as this the only activity they can carry out with moderate supervision…… leaving you with time to do some thing…. but we had no TV
and we had a ball……..
Posted by Reena on January 23, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Well three hours does seem like quite a lot, but methinks if you regulate what they watch (ceebeebies is great, no commercials ans always age appropriate) then it is OK. That and Tom and jerry in the evening. TV is a saviour after all!