Does your kid have a TV in his/her room?

Spent some time with a college friend this weekend, and we discussed parenting quite a bit. He's having some trouble getting his first-grader not only to read, but to patiently be read to.

Anyway, I asked if there was a TV in his son's room, and he said that there is not at his house, but there is at his mom's. They don't get along particularly well, so it's tough for them to get on the same page about such things.

So, I pose this to SportsJournalists.com nation:

(1) Does your child have a TV in his/her room?
(2) If so, when did he or she get it - i.e. what age?
(3) Any discernible effect on his or her academic work?

 

My sons are 7 and 6 and neither will ever have a TV in their room.

They do have Innotabs, which is a cheap kids' version of an iPad that you can put shows on. They do not have Internet access... Mostly they use them for reading or educational games. If they watch shows, it's usually on a road trip.

I had a TV in my room when I was a teenager (probably 16 or 17), but I was a straight-A student, so that was probably why I didn't get any resistance when I brought in the extra TV from the garage.

 

My kids watch their share of TV, but they also read a lot. Between me reading to them and them reading at the Y and before they go to bed, I would bet they read close to an hour a day.

 

I always leave the lights on when I leave his room at night for him, and he requests that I leave a bunch of books on his bed. It cracks me up when I go back in there a little while later to check in, and he's sitting up in bed looking at some random book on sharks or volcanoes or whatever else. He can't read yet, except for a handful of words, so I always think, "What the heck is going through his little head as he looks through that?"

 

Nope, and never will until they leave home.

The only thing they can take to their room with them are their Kindle Fires, which probably isn't a ton better than having a TV in their room - it's still "screen time" - but I'll lose that battle to win the war.

The TV in our master bedroom crapped out on us a couple of months ago, and we had always had it on in the background as white noise as we went to sleep. We were going to replace it, but in the week or so we went without it, the difference in the amount and quality of sleep we got was night and day. I think our house is going to be a no-TV-in-any-bedroom house from here on out.

 

I have a high school freshman son and seventh-grade daughter, and our house has only one TV (in the family room).

Within the past year or two, they did get gadgets that can access the Internet (he has an iPod, she has a Nook), and while my son has no problem shutting down and getting to sleep, it was an issue with my daughter. So she has to leave the Nook downstairs when she goes to bed on school nights.

Actually, my son has one of our old "boom boxes" in his room, and the only time he uses it is at bedtime. He'll leave the radio tuned to a local country station (at low volume) and the background noise helps him fall asleep. My wife or I shut it off when we go to bed. An old trick that's much less intrusive than TV.

 

Our oldest (16) does not have a TV in her room, none of the little kids will have one either. The ship has sailed on her having her laptop in her room but the rest of the kids will have fairly strict rules about phones and their computers in their room.

Basically nothing after 10 PM depending on their age.

 

We went out of our way not to push either of the boys to learn to read early. We wanted it to happen on its own, not because we were pushing them so we could brag to our family and friends, which is the way my parents did it.

We read to them regularly and they both would ask for books to read or look at from about age 3 on...

 

My kids do not have TVs in their rooms (well, the one in college has one in his dorm). But it hardly matters. My son in high school watches shows on his phone all the time.

 

From the time my kids were babies, I told read them books or made up stories every night. I think i stopped when the youngest was in second grade and he was a reading demon.

 

My kid's school library has ebooks where they can pick out a book and I can have it on my Kindle Fire or iPad within seconds and reading it to them. Having that kind of selection has been great, as well as all of the books we have. I've read them all of the Magic Tree House books
as well as some of the Junie B. Jones and Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume stuff that most of us read as kids.

 

I don't think we ever will because we will get her an Ipad instead.