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How much of, and what, does your family view on TV?
A friend of mine recently spoke to her kindergarten class of four year old’s about dinnertime and eating at the table. After a few blank looks and protesting, she discovered that the majority of them had no idea what she was talking about, as they ate with their parent(s) in front of the telly. I was initially shocked, but thinking more about it, realise how easily one can fall into doing that. You’re both tired, both get home after office hours, and all you want to do is relax and eat and not have to think or talk about anything much. Dinner + Telly, there you go.
Looking up the statistics on TV viewing, you realize just how many murders, violence, etc. you view over a year, or two or ten. It is shocking. Not only do you view a lot more than you realize, but you don’t really realize how desensitized you get to violence, violent crime news, etc.
A recent article I read online revealed these interesting TV facts:
- The number of murders seen by a child by the time they finish elementary school: 8 000
- 54% of 4 – 6 year olds who, when asked to choose between TV and spending time with dad, preferred TV
- 66% of Americans watch TV while eating dinner
- 200 000 acts of violence seen by age 18 on TV, including 40 000 murders
According to the Barna Group’s research:
- A person’s lifelong behaviors and views are generally developed when they are young – particularly before they reach the teenage years
- A person’s moral foundations are generally in place by the time they reach age nine
- “In essence,” the researcher noted, “what you believe by the time you are 13 is what you will die believing.
(George Barna wrote one of my favorite eye-opening books on children, called Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions, a must read if you’re interested!)
Delving a bit deeper into this topic, I found it interesting that a friend of mine’s three year old began being suddenly defiant after watching a few episodes of a children’s TV program about rebellious sheep who defied their owner. This may sound silly, but hear me out 🙂 It is amazing that a child who can hardly speak fluent sentences yet can learn powerful habits and attitudes from cartoons.
Take the time my three year old, after watching a kid’s TV program about a girl who’s a doctor to her imaginary friends, wanted to play doctor to his two year old sister with a pair of garden shears. True story. I have a long TV ban and the grey hairs to prove it. Luckily they were playing outside next to me! Kids just aren’t mature enough to process and understand stuff on TV. Even if they are watching children’s programs, I’ve come to learn!
So, where do you draw the line? Are you not allowed to get home and relax a bit in front of the telly after a long, hard day? Are you supposed to pick your viewing down to what cartoons you let your child watch? That’s for you to work out and weigh up. In our house we stick to a couple of educational cartoons and a few christian programs, and my hubby and I love series every now and then, after the kids are asleep.
Here are a few things to consider doing, to move your family in a positive direction:
Toss The TV
Personally, I know all too well how hard it is to be adamant you won’t let your baby watch TV..I felt this way until my son was two and his sister came along, and then I was ever so grateful for the telly to distract him so I could just have a moment to myself. The moments turned into an hour a day, and my obliging DVD-glued toddler never protested once. I understand it’s appeal. What we did when we got married (and man am I grateful for it) is we chose to not have a TV in the house. This year we’ll have been married for twelve years, and still.. we do not own a TV. Not to say we don’t hire DVD’s ocassionally, but the beauty of it is we try and get into the habit of eating dinner as a family. At a table. {Read more about the importance of eating dinner as a family in our post Connecting Effectively With Your Son, from our Raising Boys series}
We try to get into the habit of reading in the evenings as opposed to watching DVD’s (a hard habit to shake sometimes, but we try), of getting into hobbies, or socialising with friends and as a family. Some days I long to sit in front of the telly and just veg, but I project and think of how I would like my kids to grow up after following our example and habits; what I’d like them to value and love doing, and then more easily opt for a book, or, if it’s the weekend, we go for a walk at the dam and feed the ducks, or swim, even though it initially takes a lot of energy.
We have friends who have a beautiful, large family, and next to their television they have a few scriptures on a page, one of them being:
Psalm 101:3 – I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me.”
I think of this often; I love it, this simple A4 of quotes and scriptures challenge and remind me to keep my heart and mind pure, and to protect and guard my heart. Wise words!
Find A Replacement Activity
So you feel the pain of that dead time where you’re tired and just want to be entertained.. Well, there are stunning alternatives to the telly out there. Considering how powerful the first ten to thirteen years of a child’s life are, it’s important that we do the most we can in those years. If we view each moment as irreplacable, as an opportunity to actively teach our kids something, what changes can we make in our TV habits? Not all TV is bad – as a family you could watch a great movie together and then discuss it afterwards – get talking about morals and lessons learnt. Focus on the Family has a great site called PluggedIn where you can read up movie reivews before you watch them with your kids. Check it out!
Personally, being Christian, I have discovered and love the look of Discipleland. They are on our list of things to buy this year. They offer awesome books on the stories of the Old & New Testaments, as well as great teaching resources with leading questions that make you and your children think! Basically you get (well, for my three your old child’s age range) 8 Old Testament quarters and 8 New Testament quarters, each quarter has thirteen lessons, each comes with a book for teacher (mom), an activity book for the kids with stickers, etc. and a teaching poster. It isn’t too pricey either, and is a stunning way to teach your child the bible and the character of God. Imagine replacing mindless TV cartoons with 45minutes of this? Nice! There are many other ways to spend your time, if you are looking at replacing TV time. Dig deep and think about it, it is a valuable thing to choose to do!
Write up a long-term lifestyle list
My husband’s big on this one, and I respect him so much for initiating this. He gets us (well, him and I at the moment until the kids are older) to write (down to weekly activities) how we’d like our future to look like. We start off thinking of no limitations, no excuses, nothing; just imagining that the world’s our oyster 🙂 Then we write a long list of things we love doing; things we’d like to learn to do, things we’d like to study, etc. Then we write next to each point if we’d like to do that activity daily, weekly or monthly, and then put it into a calendar. You’ll be surprised to find that you can fit a heck of a lot into your week, and can start even now to slowly learn/study/begin those things you feel are impossible or too expensive. Learning to surf in Thailand may not be an easy thing to learn to do considering I live on the other side of the world, but learning Spanish is totally doable.
Two hours a week is not impossible if I just learn to stop doing things that waste my time (goodbye NCIS and hello productivity!!) They say that 10 000 hours in a field makes you an expert. Those hours add up over the years pretty quickly! Don’t let life pass you by. Picture yourself in ten or twenty years time; what you’d like to do and who you’d like to be, and work at it, in a planned way. Remember that bad habits also add up – although I am mildly proud in a geeky way to have watched all TEN Seasons of Stargate SG1 while pregnant with my first child, man, what a waste of time! I could be nearly fluent in Spanish by now, know what I’m saying? If I had kept on going with cheesy sci-fi where would that get me in ten or twenty years time? Most probably ten kilo’s heavier and into a SG1 fan conference. (Of course, no offense to those that do go, it’s just not high on my bucket list 😉 )
I hope I’ve helped you look at the value of your time in a new way, as well as remember the power we as parents have in being examples to our children.
Marta says
We don’t watch TV for last 6 months. But my boys fell in love in PS3 games.
I don’t know how I’ll do that but I have to stop it.
It’s wasting our life for worthless things.
Alexa says
This is a great piece. I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to rid us of our TV watching, but I am still stuck as to how to entertain my whiny children. They have gotten too spoiled by technology and would rather watch cartoons than anything else. I need to start getting crafty with them, or taking them on walks or to the parks or SOMETHING.
TK says
Thank you for such an inspiring post! I am guilty of letting my toddler watch TV because I’m kind of attached to this habit myself! I’ll try to do what I can to cut it out of our routine.
Victoria from the Busy House Big Heart says
We recently sold our TV in a garage sale and got rid of cable a longtime before that. We have the internet now. Dinner time is always for conversation about our day.
Heidi de Jesus Ferreira says
Awesome! 🙂
Katie Spencer White says
Great piece – good not agree more. For those who can’t ditch the boob tube entirely just yet, I suggest a news fast – it really cuts down on the murder rate in the house. I also suggest parents start with their own viewing first. Once you start cutting back, within a few months the idea of getting rid of TV doesn’t seem so scary 😉