Are your kids on their way to being television addicts?
I pretty much stopped watching TV when I got to college, partly because there was so much work to do, and partly because I couldn’t afford cable.
What I remember most about watching TV is how addicting it was. It didn’t matter so much what was showing at the time, as long as the TV was on and I was sitting in front of it, I was satisfied.
Thinking back, watching TV was a terrible way to spend my time. I wish I could go back and spend that time writing or reading or something.
Don’t let that happen to your kids…
Have you heard the stats about how much TV your kids are watching in home-based daycare centers?
Take a look at this…
According to Alex Bellamy over at Great Dad, kids in home-based daycares watch an average of 2.4 hours of TV a day – that’s 2 hours more on average than kids in daycare centers!
Kids in pre-school shouldn’t be spending their time watching TV. They should be learning with hands-on activities, not be planted in front of a TV for hours at a time.
Parents should really take the time to speak with daycare providers to control how many hours the children can watch each day, and which programs they are allowed to watch.
The best advice is to have “media-free” days. Turn off your TV right after a program is finished so the entire family can interact with each other. You can even take this even further by not watching TV at all on certain days.
No matter what you do, TV is a great time-waster and unless you want to throw away the hours you can spend with your kids, teaching them valuable things the TV can’t teach, put a strict limit on the number of hours your kids can spend in front of the TV.
Note: Nowadays kids can go on the Internet to watch shows that have been posted. They can access sites like Youtube or Hulu to watch TV, so cable and an actual TV set isn’t really necessary. Be aware of this, too.
How many hours a day do your kids spend watching TV? Do you set TV rules in the home and out of the home? What’s a show that you think would actually benefit the kids?
Parenting Advice For Limiting TV Time Away From Home [GreatDad]
