🚀 go-pugleaf

I think perhaps the best thing one can do for one's children is to get
rid of one's TV completely.

I asked for help from this newsgroup a few years ago on getting
information about children and TV.  One person directed me to the
American Academy of Pediatrics.  The information they sent me
indicated that *not* having a TV in the home is even more beneficial
than I had suspected.  Children who grow up in a home without a TV are
more likely to:

* get better grades
* be more athletic
* choose nonviolent solutions to problems rather than violent
    solutions
* have lower rates of teen pregnancy
* have better nutrition

and (here is the real kicker)
have lower rates of cholesterol!

What wasn't measured was the amount of conflict that TV causes between
parents and children--it causes children to want things that the
parents don't want them to have.  You either have to buy the junk or
else you have increased conflict and tension--you lose either way.

Some claim that parents who don't have a TV are just "better" parents
and their children would turn out as above regardless whether there
was a TV in the home or not.  This theory would be easy to test--get
rid of your TV for a year, and see what happens to your children.

Some parents try a compromise approach of "limiting" TV or
"monitoring" the programs.  However, I've never seen this be very
effective.  Either it slips into being lax or else it causes a huge
amount of struggle between the parents and the children (as happened
when I tried it).  I also remember when I was a child how effective I
was in circumventing any TV restrictions in order to watch whatever I
wanted.

Our current approach is that the TV stays in a box in storage and has
come out roughly twice over the last year (once for the Olympics and
once for a video).

I've never heard very sound arguments for *keeping* a TV in the house.
Yes, there *are* some excellent programs on TV.  However, I've found
myself (when I'm on business trips and have a TV in my hotel room) not
only watching the excellent programs, but also the trash.  After all,
the trash is designed to be most addictive.  The trash seems (last
time I watched) to constitute 99% of TV.  And now all channels
(including "public" TV) seem to have advertisements.  In the case of
friends who say they have a TV to watch the good programs, whenever I
see them watching TV, what "just happens to be on" is the trash.  So
this seems to be more a rationalization than a reason.

I suspect that the real reason parents don't get rid of their TV is
they are addicted.  But in view of the above, it is a habit worth
kicking.

(Some of the above is from Pediatrics, Vol 96 No 4 October 1995)

David Gordon