Your TV rules and kids

Gotcha.

Yeah, I'd say, though - and I know this is easy for me to say - we don't have to worry too much at our place about grades not being important. I know this will last about as long as belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny, but right now, I have him convinced that all the White Sox and Bears players had to get A's in school to get where they're at now.

Last night, he asked how many years school goes. I told him 12, then four years of college, then three years for law or four for medical, if he's so inclined.

He said: "What about sports school?"

I said, "Two years. It's called business school, and you need it to be the boss of a team."

 

The problem I run into is that my 6-year-old daughter doesn't care about sports and probably never will. My 9-year-old son is a fanatic. When I sit down to watch with him, she feels like she's getting screwed because he's getting "extra time."

 

Mine is 2 and he usually gets to watch one episode of Bubble Guppies or Berenstain Bears while having his milk and mom is getting ready and usually one episode before his afternoon nap (also with his milk). He rarely makes it through either without getting off the couch to play with his toys or to dance to the songs or to bother mom in the bathroom or playing on the couch while I eat lunch.
He usually ignores the TV at night, although it's one with either sports or a cooking show. Although he loves to watch baseball, soccer or hockey.
He is allowed to watch nursery rhymes on YouTube or play puzzles on the Kindle as well if I am trying to cook dinner. He also likes to play with our phones...opening our photos/videos and watching himself entertains him enough.
In all, maybe an hour or so of "screen time" a day...but the rest is spent playing at the park, in our backyard or in his playroom. He loves books and puzzles and seems to be very smart.
I grew up on computers (Apple IIe mostly) watched TV (Dukes of Hazard and Saturday morning cartoons FTW!) and had a Nintendo which I OVERplayed like mad...all the way into college. But it never hurt my grades or made me lose friends over it.

 

I don't want to be a hypocrite.

I watched a ton of TV, had a lot of friends, got mostly A's and played sports year-round.

I'll pay more attention to what they're watching then anything else.

 

Agreed. My buddy has kids that are 10, 12, and 14 (roundabout guess) and he was much stricter on violence than sex/nudity/swearing. I know some that are on the other side of the fence. Being mine is only 2, I'm not to that point yet.

 

Luckily, I'm not there yet and my kids are 8 and 6. I snuck into Fast Times at Ridgemont High when I was 8 or 9. I doubt that will be an issue with my kids, at least not this young.

I'm sure this will get me crucified here, but the show I turn off more than anything in front of them is the news. It's just so sensationalized and depressing.

One of the things that is great about TV these days is you can get shows on demand and you don't have to deal with the level of advertising that you would otherwise, although the FF button on the DVR remote takes care of that as well.

 

Oh, same boat here. Mine are 5 and 1. The 1-year-old doesn't understand yet, but the 5-year-old would. He catches everything. I'm gradually letting him know it's not all roses and daisies out there - he knows that Lincoln was assassinated, for example, and he knows that Germany tried to take everyone's land leading to WWII. But I'd like to keep him mostly happy about the world he lives in for a little while longer, at least.

 

Wait until he starts watching the kids' shows featuring single moms on the prowl for cock.

 

There's not as much of that anymore. There are so few "family" shows on the networks that the shows they watch are like "Good Luck Charlie" and "Liv and Maddie" and are a lot more tame than what we had as kids.

 

There's a new one called the Haunted Hathaways, with a mom and two daughters moving to New Orleans after a divorce and finding out their house is haunted. There's a lot of subtext in that one.

 

The rule in my house when the kids were growing up was no TV during dinner. We turned it off. Period. And sat at the table and spoke. Sometimes. Sometimes we just glared at each other. Other than dinner, if your homework and chores were done, have at the TV.

But my number one rule regarding TVs? None in the bedroom. Period.

To this day, I still refuse to sleep with a TV in my bedroom. We had plenty of TVs in my little house. But not a one in anyone's bedroom. You want to watch TV? Watch away. In a public room.

 

Sporcle is so addictive. I love it. I remember getting a computer (no Internet, of course) as a kid and having a ball designing newsletters in Publisher and playing science games. I was a nerd.

One thing about it though: I didn't have a TV in my bedroom until well into middle school (when my grandma died and I got the TV from her nursing home room). My two younger cousins had TVs in their rooms before they were 5. I still think I spent more time in my room reading a book than watching the 12 channels that we got out in the boonies.