Your TV rules and kids

There are a lot of parents (and teachers and child experts) who freak out about "screen time." Not just TV, but video games and smartphones and such. I appreciate the concern. Truly, you don't want a kid who spends all day doing nothing but texting. (Actually, my kids tend not to just watch TV. More often, they have the TV on in the background while they're texting, tweeting, watching YouTube videos or playing games on their phones.) Often, that freakout translates to the idea that the key to raising genius children is keeping them away from screens as much as possible.

As with most things, it's all about balance, and monitoring to make sure things don't get too out of hand.

 

I watched a ton of TV as a kid. I was a latchkey kid and I'd come home from school, do my homework in front of the TV and do that until I had to leave for football practice. When I got back from practice, I watched it until I went to bed.

My kids have more structure than I did. They have an afterschool program that they go to until I pick them up around 5, then we feed them quickly and head off to karate or football or swimming or whatever sport they have going.

Last night was the classic example, they didn't watch anything and it wasn't because we didn't let them. I took my oldest to football practice, my wife took my youngest to swimming. We got home at 8, they showered and then read in their rooms. They didn't ask to watch anything.

I definitely don't want them becoming couch potatoes, but I don't understand the thinking behind dramatically restricting how much they watch.

 

My kids are 6 and 9. During the week, 1/2 a day screen time (TV, Wii, iPhone, etc.). On weekends, about 1/2 in the morning (with an extra 1/2 hr if they watch in Spanish -- their school is a Spanish immersion school and we like to reinforce it at home) and 90 minutes in the afternoon. Watching sports with me doesn't count toward the screen time limit. The reason for the limits is to encourage them to read, build legos, engage in imaginative play, go outside, etc, on days that they don't have soccer games, ballet, gymnastics, etc.. If the screen time was unlimited that's all they'd ever want to do.

 

Yeah, there are definitely nights where I'll let the 10-minute limit go if there's a particularly important game on, or if he's been really good, or if Jose Abreu is coming up the next inning or something like that.

I think eventually the rule will be something along the lines of, "You guys can watch sports during the week, but not cartoons."

Because I think sports are good for them and I want them to be interested in sports. To me it's not the same as vegging out in front of "Paw Patrol," even though cartoons are way better than they were when we were kids.

 

That is an extraordinarily difficult argument to make these days.

My oldest son has less than zero interest in sports. He is way better off.

 

Well, I didn't have a cell phone or a tablet or even a computer when I was a child, so maybe that changes things.
There were plenty of times my parents told me to go outside, if they felt like was watching too much TV or they just wanted me out of the house.

It is a shame that children get so little unstructured play time now.

 

Do you mean because of travel obligations and such?

 

No I mean sports on TV is glorification of criminals, at least when you try to explain to a kid why they're still out there. My oldest is a competitive swimmer, so he's an athlete, but he doesn't waste his time watching the stuff.

 

http://www2.aap.org/pressroom/play-public.htm

 

Mine's not old enough to catch onto any of that yet, though.

He knows about steroids, though.

 

My oldest spends hours sorting his football cards like I did when I was his age.

I don't worry too much about spending too much time on tablets/laptops etc. My kids get bored with that stuf after an hour or so and it doesn't usually go that long.

My oldest was home sick last May and I was working from home and I told him, "Look, I have a ton of stuff to do so you can read, play on my iPad, watch TV whatever...

By the time the day was done he had taught himself the state capitals by playing Sporcle. He's eight.

 

I just thought about it again and I realized I'm conflating some issues here. You might have these feelings too as your son ages. To add to what I'm saying:

My son just started high school. Already we're seeing the effects from other kids in his class whose parents have pushed sports above all else -- their grades and/or behavior are not good. These are not poor kids by any means; these are kids who by family profile you would think would be pointed toward academic success. But they've grown up with the idea that the only way to get recognition is to be an athlete. It's weird and it's sad. So the fact that my son does not subscribe to that is helping him, I believe. He has no idea why Colin Kaepernick has special status as a human being. When a kid who came through our baseball league got drafted out of high school this summer, he thought that was cool but no cooler than, say, the other kid he knows who got into Berkeley.

My younger son (seventh grade) is more into sports. We watch together and it's great fun, his favorite teams are the archrivals of my favorite teams so he can bust my chops. But when he gets to school, a lot of the kids he plays baseball with are not very good students, and they and their parents don't seem to care much. He is very susceptible to falling into that not-caring trap unless we are on his case every day.

So, in that light and basing it only on my own experiences watching my sons and other kids, yeah, on the whole it has been easier with our oldest who hasn't gotten into the whole sports culture.

--Also: True story. I was telling my wife about the latest developments in the Ray McDonald case last week. The seventh-grader asked what we were talking about, and I told him, and he was surprised that I said it so "nonchalantly." He was right, too.