Parenting Solutions: TV Addiction

The Change to Parent For

Your child learns to be more selective about television watching and finds more proactive outlets for entertainment, creativity, growth, and healthy social development.

Why Change?

"Can't I watch TV just one more hour?" "But there's nothing to do and it's my favorite show!"

It's so easy for kids to fall into the additive habit of spending too much time in front of the boob tube. But the fact is that the more kids watch TV, the more time is lost for nurturing creativity, learning sports or hobbies, playing in the great outdoors, practicing social skills, or just finding ways to entertain and enjoy themselves. Those key "family connecting moments" are lost as well, as are other crucial life lessons.

The statistics are dismal: kids ages six months to six years spend three times as many hours watching TV as they do reading or being read to.³² One-third of kids ages six and younger have a TV set in their room. The average American kid watches four hours of TV a day.³³ Most of us realize that our kids are in front of that TV more than we'd like, so here are solutions to curb your children's viewing habits and help them find healthier entertainment options (and maybe even save on that electricity bill).

The Solution

Five Strategies for Change

1. Check your whole family's TV viewing habits. Have you ever really stopped to track how much TV you and your kids watch each day? If not, take the parent challenge: for the next few days, keep a diary of your family's TV habits. Anybody who turns on that TV must log in. Then add those minutes up (or have your kids do the adding—it's a great math lesson). The number just may shock—or delight—you. Just make sure you include your own viewing time as well. That number will fuel your commitment to help break your children's television addiction.
2. Commit your family to change. Research shows that the more television our kids watch, the greater their chances of being overweight and having lower grades. But TV addiction can be broken, just like substance addiction, by detox and through strong, consistent commitment. Here are ways to break TV addiction. Do whatever it takes so that your kids know you are serious about breaking this bad habit.
   • Talk to your family about the bad effects of addiction and the good effects of moderation so that they are more likely to buy in to your discussion points.
   • Enforce a policy of 100 percent TV abstinence for at least a month or two (no kidding), and don't give in.
   • Unplug the television sets. Some families actually lock their sets in a closet.
   • Find healthy alternatives and substitute positive activities that your kids can do instead of watching the boob tube. Here are some possibilities: dust off the board games, teach some card games; start music lessons or turn on music; encourage a new hobby, such as knitting, drawing, or yoga; get everyone out of the house and away from the television, go to the gym, put up a basketball hoop, or enroll your kid in a swim program or sports club; how about getting everyone a library card? The trick is to match your child's interests to activity alternatives; the best way to do that is to get them involved in the process, then don't give in.
3. Set limits on screen time. Once your kids are weaned from constant viewing, set a limit as to the maximum number of viewing hours each day and then stick to it. Make your kids accountable for staying within the time limits. Here are solutions:
   • Track their viewing hours on a paper taped by the set. Or make them use an inexpensive electronic kitchen timer: the kids punch in their TV time, and the timer must run while they're watching TV. The timer provides an ongoing total of the number of television viewing minutes.
   • Set the timer from your TV's remote for the total minutes allowed each day.
   • Turn off the TV when the show is over.
   • Don't allow channel surfing.
   • Establish certain TV-free hours, such as during dinner and from six to eight in the evening when kids usually do homework.
   • Specify one night (or all school nights) as a no-TV night. A favorite show that appears during any of these times can be taped and viewed during the weekend. And if you want your child to learn how to get along with other kids, apply the no-TV rule when friends come over.
4. Be selective as to content. Insist that your kids select in advance the shows they want to watch, and have them submit a weekly schedule that must be approved. Explain that from now on your children must make an appointment to watch TV so that viewing becomes more of a privilege.
5. Make the bedroom TV free. Kids who have a TV in their bedroom watch an average of 286 hours more a year than kids who don't.³⁵ Research shows that those flickering screens often left on (or turned back on after you've gone to bed) also disrupt kids' sleep.³⁶ Another study found that children had lower school achievement when they had a TV in their room.³⁷ It's difficult to monitor what your kid is watching or for how long when he is watching alone in his room. So take that TV out of there right away.

What To Expect By Stages And Ages

Preschooler   Imagination fuels fears among toddlers and preschoolers, so check out what they're watching so as to prevent nightmares. Tune in closely to content and language. Kids copy what they hear, so they'll pick up "sass" talk and inappropriate language from watching certain TV shows.

School Age   Limit exposure especially on school nights, when viewing may push out homework and reading time. Televised violence by itself contributes to as much as 15 percent of all of kids' aggressive behaviors,³⁸ so keep close track of what your kid is watching to be sure that it's in line with your family values.

Tween   Materialism peaks during these ages, and the ubiquitousness of TV commercials boosts it. Review your viewing standards and monitor evening shows in which gratuitous sex, language, and violence are rampant. A top concern for parents of tweens is that the children will see upsetting late-breaking news events without an adult to explain.

Pay Attention to This!

Stanford University: A study of more than a thousand schoolchildren found that watching real-life violence as displayed on television news programs may have just as powerful an impact on a child as would a personal experience of the incident.³⁴ So do monitor what your kids watch and switch that TV off anytime your instinct tells you that what is airing is inappropriate.

One Parent's Answer

A mom from Boise shares:

I realized my kids' life revolved around the TV, so I set strict viewing limits. When they complained there wasn't anything to do, I stocked plastic bins with creative stuff they would enjoy—Lego, clay, craft sticks, glue, marking pens, paper, as well as fun activities for the outdoors. It took a little bit of coaxing, but after two weeks, they don't miss TV and are having a lot more fun discovering an unplugged life.