Help me out mommies and daddies...
My 3-year-old loves television. We watch PBS Kids or children's movies and don't do more than either one movie or 2 shows per day. Usually we can get about 2 days with no TV time at all, but I tell you...it can be a battle. She has the most amazing attention span. If I were to let her, she could sit in front of the TV and watch movies all day. Not sure if the attention to TV is a good thing, but she pays such close attention she is reciting movie quotes...and somehow they tend to be the one line in the movie with the word "idiot." Yes, almost all children's movies use that word.
Is TV bad for a 3-year-old?
What is the limit?
When she is watching educational shows is it less bad?
Sometimes I think she really is learning concepts from the shows. This morning she told me that when it is dark and you turn your light on you can see the doors shadow. We have just started talking about shadows because of an episode of "Sid the Science Kid."
What do you think? Is TV ok in moderation? And what is moderation in TV?
4 comments:
Well, look at it this way: our parents probably watched much more TV growing up than we were supposed to...and that's probably the case for us, too.
This is a very hard issue and one we battle over almost daily too. If I'm being really honest I'd say Lily usually watched about one hour of TV a day - some days none and some days a little more. These days we make the offer that if she sleeps all night and doesn't come out of her room till after 6:30am she gets to watch something short in the morning (Thomas, etc.) Then usually if I try to exercise when she's awake she may watch more then or after she wakes up from nap time.
I agree that most movies seem to have the word "stupid" and "idiot" in them! Frustrating!
I do feel that I've seen Lily "learn" things from Sesame Street. But because it's an hour long we don't watch it that often. It's too hard to battle with her to turn it off in the middle!
If the tv gives you a little time to get something done or regroup, I think it's totally fine in moderation. We probably watch 30-60 minutes/day of educational programs. Sometimes I REALLY NEED that 30 minute semi-break.
I watch most of Sesame street with Clark most mornings and he finishes up Elmo's World while I cook his breakfast. Beyond that, he may watch an episode of Thomas or Baby Eistein during the evening when we're working on dinner. We try to always have lots of activities for him during the day so that he knows that there's a whole lot more to do than sit around and watch TV.
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