I passed by a college dormitory recently and was surprised by the number of
college students glued to the television in their rooms.  I suppose that
habits must start young.  I wouldn't want my own children to have such habits
though.  How do you keep kids from spending their entire lives in front of
the television?  What other activities can you offer them that are more
interactive and more healthy, in terms of exercise, instead of sitting?

22 responses total.

Parents, or any one else, becoming a replacement for TV is not the
answer.  Nor is ferrying them around to various activities.  TV is a
pacifier.  To ween a child from a pacifier you take it away and put
up with complaints for a while.  Same goes for TV.  Leave the rest
up to the child.  As a parent it is your responsibility to be sure
that they take up socially acceptable, parent acceptable, activities.

Read to your child from the very beginning and continue
reading until the child sees books as a basic part of 
a day, a form of relaxation and enrichment.  

Readers get bored with television pretty quickly.

Not having one in the house works very well, too.

If kids get used to the idea that a family is a communal unit- that TV is a
shared activity of used at all- then they won't really want or enjoy a TV that
is watched alone in their room, by college.  Doesn't the dorm lounge have
one?

TV isn't a big part of our family life.  We read every night, we go 
outside and do things, we often do some kind of activity over the 
weekend.  We went to the Tulip Festival in Holland over the past 
weekend, for example.  Our 7 year old is in sports programs; this spring 
he's playing baseball, and we go outside and play baseball in the 
backyard quite a lot.  Our 2 year old isn't interested in TV, so he's 
not hard to divert.

It helps a lot that we can't get cable and don't have a dish, and so TV 
reception is often pretty bad, even if we do turn it on.  We're moving 
in a couple of weeks, and won't even have an outside antenna, so we'll 
only get the TV we can get with rabbit ears.  It's the next best thing 
to Misti's solution.

We've often wondered how anyone can have a family life, and also find 6 
hours a day to watch TV, as I guess 'average' families do.  We're out of 
touch with the popular culture, and I couldn't be happier.

   mta has a point.  not owning a tv is a good way to keep the habit
from forming.

I don't have a t.v. and don't plan on ever getting one, but I've been warned
that children will complain once they realize all of their friends have t.v.'s
at home if they don't.  Now, if any of you know of an entire neighborhood
where nobody owns a t.v., let me know and I'll think about moving there. 
Otherwise, how do you deal with the issue?  It's easy for you to say to a
child that you don't believe the t.v. is worth it to have in your own home.
Somehow I'm not sure what the next course of action is when the kid throws
fits over the matter though.  I haven't personally met a household with kids
and no t.v. and leading the trend is bound to be difficult.  Reading to the
child is a very good idea that I'll have to keep in mind.

Re: #4 Depends on the college.  When I was in college, we had 540 people in
one dorm and three t.v.'s so unless you were motivated to fight for it, you
didn't watch it.  But the campus I recently visited, I saw dorm suites, shared
by four students each, have a t.v. in them.

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I raised my kids without television until the younger one was 10 -- by then,
the kids knew all kinds of ways to amuse themselves.  After that, I tried to
encourage them to watch "good TV" -- with cable there's plenty.  After a year
or so of that encouragement, I let them go and watch whatever they wanted.
I figured they'd do it anyway eventually, and I had done what I could to
influence their tastes.  It seems to have worked.  One watches almost no TV
and the other watches some -- but has pretty good taste in what he watches.
(I did have to live through several months of biting my toungue when they
watches utter dreck just because they could, thogh.

Yeah, they fuss a bit about no TV but frankly i\f it wasn't about TV it's be
about something else.  Kids fuss.  I just explained my reasons and that was
the end of it.

Our kids don't complain about no TV - it's my mother who really thinks we're
depriving them.  (OTOH, lest you get the wrong idea ... when we visit my
folks, the kids spend an awful lot of time in front of the TV, and have been
known when back home to wish they could see some specific programs they
see at their grandparents'.)

Our boys have been known to say that they wished we had a TV.  But it's not
a big deal, Jonathan has *much* more often wished for a better computer or
for a computer of his own!  And they lead full lives without one, including
a few friends who come over here to play.  They wouldn't watch so much TV
at the grandparents' house if that situation were more child-oriented;
Grammie *expects* them to watch.

I grew up without a TV; when I was about 15 my grandparents gave my parents
some money to help purchase one, and my father chose to spend the money on
a nonfunctioning second-hand one that he fixed up (one tube had to be
twiddled periodically).  My sister and I watched _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._
and _Get Smart_, and occasionally something else -- I remember  the
Rodgers & Hammerstein _Cinderella_, I stayed up a little late to watch the 
end of that even though it was the night before some final exams in high
school. We kept the TV in the basement then; years later I was surprised to see
 that it had moved upstairs.  

My view of the here-and-now situation is that I don't think they're evil,
I just don't want one in my home taking up precious space & tempting my
husband to watch it.  Our lives are too full already.  I wish I could
borrow some of the average American's television time, to catch up on
sleep or mending or something. 

Putting a t.v. in a place where activity is not centered is probably a good
option.  I suppose I would want some sort of t.v. and VCR eventually, as I
find it amusing to watch videos of me and my siblings at a younger age, and
I'd like to film my own kids someday.  But there is a lot of stuff out there
that I wouldn't want a younger child, who can't discriminate well, to be
watching.

Our TV is in the basement.  It's a good 5' off the ground, going up to
7' for the VCR.  Our kids watch little TV as there are always chores
that need to be seen to and they have both become very addicted to books.
I'm sure our collection of childrens books outweighs the TV and VCR
several times over.  They are also getting very good with the Legos and
Erector sets.

re #7 about kids complaining if there's no TV in the house... how do you 
handle your kids asking for anything that someone else has?

Some of our neighbors have ATVs, motorcycles, Jet Skis, and one family 
has a motorized tricycle for their 5 year old.  My kids have cousins who 
have phones and TVs in their rooms.  My kids don't have these things, 
and won't any time soon.  We do have TV (but no cable or dish).  They 
complain about everything they want and don't have.  Kids do that.  We 
say "no".  Parents do *that*.  (-:

Sometimes we say "Well, then, save up your allowance and get it 
(whatever 'it' is) if you want it".  It's an awful thing, I've found, to 
give up all the $1 and $5 toys the 7 year old can buy with a $4/week 
allowance, in order to save for something more expensive.

We have a Little One on the way, and one of the things we've discussed 
as to his/her upbringing is future TV policy.  One of the things we've 
noticed with friends and neighbors of ours is that some of their kids 
watch LOTS of television; one friend recently bought her 
four-year-old(!) her *own* TV/VCR ("Well, it's only a 13-inch set...", 
she said), and another's kids for whom we sometimes sit want to do 
nothing but watch videos, and probably have a hundred and fifty or more 
(but we make them turn it off and play games or color or whatever with 
us; Mom will invariably ask us a couple days later what we did to her 
kids, as they had been so calm and well-behaved for at least the next 24 
hours after our visit).  Another thing we've noticed is that kids' 
television programs are mostly awful--they are generally insipid and/or 
violent (which is to say: they're a lot like adult television).  Plus, 
they're one big commercial--even PBS shows fill the toy stores with 
"product".  

As mentioned in previous posts, more important than banning television 
is teaching the kids "healthy" viewing habits; they're going to 
encounter television sooner or later, so they might as well be prepared 
(kind of like sex education--if you don't teach them and don't talk 
about it, they'll try to learn on their own, and probably make 
mistakes).  So, we decided that our rule will be strict limitation of 
television viewing, with restrictions on both time and content.  

In practice, I think the rule will work something along the lines of 
"you can only watch while we watch."  This will accomplish a few things: 
1)if they can only watch while we watch, they won't be watching much, as 
my wife and I don't watch much teevee 2)if we're right next to them as 
they watch, we can bring up points for discussion/education, or simply 
invoke our parental censorship rights if the content turns violent or 
otherwise unacceptable, and 3)family togetherness is always good. 

I like your plan.  In practice, I use the "one eyed babysitter" way too much,
as the boys tend to wake up before we do.  There are some programs that I
really like- the human-content of Sesame Street is really good, although the
instructional level is too young for them now, and I'd watch Reading Rainbow
all on my own.  I would *not* give kids their own set- it separates the
family, and most of our videos do happen to be more for the boys but I picked
them out.  We don't buy "television toys" and they are perfectly happy with
that policy.  I didn't want them to see "Toy Story" since it seemed one big
marketing ploy.  Sure enough, they saw it often at a friend's house, and the
little one made some tentative efforts to get me to consider a)buying the
movie and b)buying the toys.  Didn't last long...They've been playing "their
own version" of Star Wars in the car for a couple of weeks now, and it really
is pretty creative and cooperative despite the number of "star destroyers"
they've blown up <g>, so I don't complain.  They even ask me to take parts
in it. Awww...(doting mom, ick!) I made the mistake of taking them to see
Disney's Hercules, even though I knew it would be awful.  Then we talked about
what is wrong with it.  They got the point.  We also talk about the ways in
which commercials are lying to us, which shows are just long commercials (some
of the recent "school house rock" bits, for example), etc. so I think they
are learning some judgment.  Good armor for a scary world.
When's your wee one due?  
Best of luck.

(The Little One is due any day now.  July 5th, officially, but who's to 
say for sure?  We're just waitin'...)

Hope labour is uneventful.  Enjoy the process, it's a big part of what we're
made for.  Keep us posted...

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I posted an announcement in Agora yesterday, but since you asked:  Emily 
Rose Hofmann was born at 7:23pm on July 9, 1998.  She came into the 
world butt-first (via C-section, much to the chagrin of my lovely wife), 
measuring 19 3/4 inches and weighing 7 pounds 9.6 ounces.  She's 
gorgeous and wonderful and perfect and she very obviously loves her 
Daddy.  She does seem to like staying up most of the night though, as 
the time stamp on this post will indicate....

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She'll eventually learn about sleeping at night, Johnnie.  ;)  Honest.

Congratulations!

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