fallon

I agree with Fooser. It's kind of like forbidden fruit. I don't limit how long she may watch, usually it's just a show or 2 than she's off to something else, but I do limit what she may watch (PBS kids, Discovery kids, Noggin, sometimes a little Nick or Kick jr., she also likes the retro cartoons on Boomerang)

Anne Glamore

Yes Fallon and Fooser, you're right. We made the mistake of curtailing too tightly for a while, and backed off a bit. It was a good lesson in forbidden fruit.
And don't worry- all are completely caught up on Shreks, etc!!

fallon

lol about Shreks...that's cute . I know just what you mean though, it's hard to know if your doing the right thing all the time. Even when you know you don't want your kids doing something, how do you do it in a way that doesn't make it more appealing? It's tough ya know

Kaytee

we will never know for sure if what we do is right or if we would have done something different it would be better.

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fallon

I think it's best to avoid asking ourselves questions like that, ya know. You can't change so why toucher yourself

Kaytee

absolutly true!! I have fought myself so much over whether what we do with her vaccines is the right thing to do. We hope it is and we are just going to what we FEEL is best and that is all we can do.

__________________

If you can't stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them!
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jtee

The question as I see it is whether a parent perceives that their children watching too much. Our daughter watches very little TV, so we don't see it at as a problem. Our daughter reads which is good, but sometimes she'll be reading and forget other things need to get done. She's not allowed to read her books before school because she'll loose all track of time.

Kaytee

good point jtee

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If you can't stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them!
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fallon

that's great jtee

evilbrent

Fooser - on this first point: punishment/reward... can you see that this way of dealing with your kids is getting only a superficial, temporary win in 'behaviour'? When a threatened child falls in line you haven't won - they haven't turned into a slightly Better Person. Is that how you intend to teach your kids about ALL of life? "I put my kids through college by threatening them in some way, that way they were always able to take the next step." It's a non-sequitur. Each little threat is a loss. Each time you threaten you've weakened your bargaining position for the next time. Each time your threatened child falls in line you've lost an opportunity to gain their agreement, which means that they'll feel more resentment next time and probably resist you until a threat comes along that they suddenly feel is big enough. There comes a balance - and at some point your 16 yr old is going to realise that most of the things you can realistically threaten them with aren't that big a deal. My mum used to threaten to take away my pocket money if I didn't do my chores. Sounded fair to me, I would rather sit and watch telly than halve pocket money anyway.

If you think that TV can be educational you're kidding yourself. An hour spent watching the flickering images of a thousand new lights and colors is not nearly as educational as an hour spent in the back yard painting a chair with mum and dad. It might be fun for the kids, and it gives them access to stories, songs and rhymes in a world where the parents are severely lacking. But it's not learning. If anything, those shows which try to elicit responses, like Blues Clues, "Do YOU know where the clue is?" are doing the opposite: they're teaching kids to ignore questions - they're teaching kids to NOT think about where the clue is, because if you wait around for a few seconds the telly will tell you the answer anyway. I've never heard my kids yell out the answer to the telly "Behind you behind you" but I have heard them sing along and dance to their favorite songs. Contrast this to book reading - kids are dying to answer the questions, to count the butterfiles on the page, to name the animals, to be INVOLVED. Television is not educational.

I let my kids watch telly just because it's easiest that way. On saturday afternoon, after we've been at the park all day, when we're all just wiped out, we'll just put on a DVD and let them flake out. Once, earlier on this year, we turned our telly off for 5 whole days, and we honestly didn't miss it. Well... the kids missed it a _bit_ but only for 2 minutes at a time. I would love to throw out our telly but the missus won't let us. And anyway, the internet is just about to overtake it anyway - youtube, facebook, parentingforums.org... I'm counting tv (and the internet) as one of my failures. I want to improve but I'm addicted.