Kids and Television

January 21, 2008 | By Kristen | In Chaos of Life

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Going on Day 7 of being home bound with sick kids.. eeeikkkk… so with plenty of time to think and little adult interaction I find myself thinking about two popular topics. The first being Kids and the effects of Television the second being Kids and the effects of over the counter medicine.

I’ll hit the T.V. topic in this post. I found this website The Parent BLOG that shows the specifics of a study on kids in different study groups and their findings when kids watch various shows.

I find this interesting because I’m actually torn on the T.V. topic. I don’t like my kids watching a TON of T.V. and we do go thru phases. There are days that they don’t even ask for a show and there are other days when they want it on all day. However, the days when it is on I find they are busy doing other things and may glance at it for a few minutes here or there.

I have to admit my six year old loves the most violent shows like Star Wars and Power Rangers but he also has this amazing love of the History channel. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since he has wanted to be “an Army man” for the last two years. I dare you to quiz him on the Civil War or World War II because he most likely would woop you in trivia. He can also explain how and why they sink old battleships to create ocean reefs and various other topics that is covered on the History or Discovery channel.

The funny thing about Drew is that he can watch old war movies, Darth Vadar melt into lava or other “violent” shows but he hates movies like “Hook” or “ELF” because they both have scenes where the baby is lost from his mom. We can go into another whole psycho analysis of this I guess and I’m sure it will come back in 20 years that I did something wrong as a mom and ruined him for life. That always seems to be the excuse of adults who don’t want to take ownership for their actions.

I guess I shouldn’t justify T.V. watching but I add points that we watch it together in the kitchen while we are playing at the counter with legos, coloring, play dough and it gives us good topics of discussions and they ask really good questions.

Then again, there was a teacher at the kids school who advised my neighbor that she should not be letting her third grader watch the evening news. I have strong feelings on that topic as well. I watch the five oclock news when I’m making dinner and if the kids are in the kitchen with me, well , they see it too. They are really good at the weather forcast! While I am watchful of the headlines and stories that they hear I don’t believe in sheltering them totally from the outside world. Another touchy subject I know, but again, we discuss the topics and they ask good questions and I personally like that my kids know there are bad people and they need to be aware of certain situations or that sometimes good people make bad choices or that house is on fire because kids were touching matches when they shouldn’t be.. hmm hmm hummm and we talk about those as well.

The whole topic can go into so many directions and there are more studies I can count on Kids and Television and they all seem to battle the others findings so I will continue to stick to my gut instict and be an imperfect mom.

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