Help! My Child Watches Too Much TV.

Television is a fact of life, and there are few families that don't have one, or that never watch one. Television can also be educational, informative, and uplifting. But, let's face it - the vast majority of what is shown on TV is pure drivel - it is far from uplifting or educational, and often portrays behavior that would be quite unacceptable in most social circles. Even worse, it often portrays that behavior as normal, or even desirable.

Besides the garbage that is fed into your child, television eats into the time your child would have otherwise spent in physical activity or in meaningful conversation. Watching television has turned normal healthy individuals into ‘couch potatoes’ since it is a largely passive and solitary activity that is detrimental to healthy social behavior.

Television certainly influences behaviors. If it didn't, advertisers wouldn't spend so many billions of dollars on their tiny, 30-second slices of it.

So, short of throwing the TV out of the window, how can you limit your child's exposure to it to reasonable amounts? Here are some suggestions:

1. Start with your own behavior. If you spend 4 hours a day watching soaps and sitcoms is it any surprise that your child does too? The biggest challenge for a parent is to be a good role model. It is not what you say, it is what you do that will most influence your kids!

2. Next, you will have to find alternatives for TV, both for yourself, and for your children. Think of healthy social activities that will improve your physical health and help you in social interactions. The best ones include taking up some sports or hobbies. Choose the sport you like and introduce your child to it. Or revive your interest in an old hobby. You may just want to relax reading a good novel, or even a comic while listening to your favorite music. But, initially you will have to put in extra effort to make it work.

Your local recreation center or the adult education center will have many programs and classes to offer at any time of the year. You can make a deal with your child that if he attends one of his favorite activities, you will offer some incentive.

3. Establish some baseline rules - eg. No TV before school, or after X pm, or during meals. Or maybe have a regular TV-free day: no TV on Tuesdays, for example.

4. Pre-schedule television - ie. People can only watch what has been pre-booked. This cuts out aimless channel surfing. Instead the family will have to look up the TV guide and find something that is actually worth watching.

5. You can draw up a chart to use television time as a reward for other activities, such as completing household chores, or getting homework done.

6. Watch television together - and then talk about what you viewed. You can discuss the program itself - its values, its quality of acting and scripting - or you can discuss the commercials. Doing the latter is a very valuable exercise as it helps children to be less naive and gullible when it comes to advertising. See if you, as a family, can figure out what strings the adverts are trying to pull to get you to want and buy their product. Do the toys and foods live up to the hype when you actually go and buy them?

7. Be fair when it comes time to turn off the television. Give some reasonable warning, and try to time it with the end of the show.

8. You can nip the evil in the bud, so to say, if you stop subscribing to the expensive cable and satellite channels. You can spend the extra money for other activities. This gives you quality time with the family and helps you bond better. A family outing or a home-cooked pizza turns out to be much more fun than watching others do similar things on the screen.

Also, remember not to overdo it. Be selective. Find the good programs and watch them. The rest of the time, do something more active or more sociable. Very soon you will wonder how you and your kids ever found the time to watch so much of it.

Article Source: http://www.christiannotepad.com

Dr. Noel Swanson is the author of The GOOD CHILD Guide for managing children's behaviors and writes for an excellent parenting website.
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