I know that several young kids in my small neighborhood have TVs in their bedrooms. I can see the TVs on through open windows or the blue flickering of shadows jumping around their bedroom walls. As we slowly drove down our road towards our home, our son was looking in one of the windows and asked if he could have a TV in his room. I told him he could. When he was an adult!
We have a TV in our room. I watch it almost every night, as the top half of our bed lifts up mechanically and it's comfortable for my back. I don't gaze at it all night long - an hour or so in the evening. It relaxes me, and sometimes informs me. It also provides me with the Real Housewives of New York and without them, my Tuesday nights would be a lonely, barren, uninspired mess...
Most estimates of TV in kids' rooms are that at least half have one. A study done by the School of Medicine and Biomedical Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo showed that while children with less TV did not necessarily exercise more, they ate one hundred calories fewer every day that kids who watched more TV.
Another study, in 2005, published in the The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine concluded that the 70% of children in the study that had TVs in their bedrooms scored much lower on testing in languages, reading and math.
French boys in a study who had televisions in their rooms were found to have more body fat and larger waist sizes than kids without TVs in their rooms.
A study in the publication Pediatrics showed kids as young as Kindergarten suffered more sleep problems if they had televisions in their rooms, and were less emotionally engaged with their surroundings.
A Buffalo study showed that kids who had TVs in their rooms watched 9 hours more TV weekly. That's an entire work day, for most.
What if my kids argue that if we, their parents, have a TV in our room, so can they?
Ah! We also can drink a glass of wine with dinner and have an ensuite bathroom! All is not democratic in the familial household! If it were, my kids would each be paying one fifth of the mortgage, yes?!
Besides, repercussions for children versus adults watching television are very different. I was about 5 years old before I saw television. What is ok in moderation for adults is not always the same for children.
So it seems having a TV in kids' bedrooms comes up a bit of a dud - certainly in studies. Of course there are also children who do very well academically and are in great health who also have televisions in their rooms. But unfortunately, this is seen less than with the kids who socialize less, are more removed from their families, and do less well both physically and academically.
My vote? No TV in our childrens' bedrooms. They sleep better without them and need to learn to fall asleep without the stimulation of television. And heaven knows what they might accidentally see. We also want to spend evenings with them, playing, talking, and spending summer evenings outdoors. I'll stick to limited early morning TV for them while I workout and shower. Anything else is unnecessary and in fact, may be detrimental.
But not everyone may feel the same way -
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How do you feel about children watching TV in their rooms? Do you allow it? Why? Why not?
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I think there is definitely a generation gap here. Like Diane's, my family had dinner together, even breakfast. We kids didn't have any electronics in our rooms, unless they were clocks. Bedrooms were for sleep, and later also for homework and music practice. The dinner table was scary because Dad would grill us about current events and whatever we read in the papers that day.
My kids weren't allowed electronics in their rooms, either, until they were in high school. We have a whole house intercom and stereo system, so I could control the radio programming. By high school, they had TVs and their PCs, and were supposed to be doing their homework. We let them have their PCs in their rooms because my hubby and I didn't want them on our machines, since we're both in IT/Software Consulting. We used to have movie night together, like my parents had when I was a kid, and watched either videos or a movie on TV, with popcorn, even.
It's totally against feng shui, but I have had a TV in my bedroom for a few years, now, and a portable DVD player. The weird thing is that I don't really watch the TV, unless it's a movie or a particular program I want to see. I didn't have a TV in my bedroom for ages, but decided to put one in because my hubby travels so much. But, I still don't watch it much.
I think that, as parents, we need to be consistent and diligent about house rules regarding TVs, PCs, phones, etc. We have a responsibility as parents to teach them good habits, provide an education and support them through childhood. Kids should be engaged in life, not glued in front of screens. The weight gain among kids is as much from lack of physical activity as the foods they eat.
What I found appalling is the number of kids whose baby sitter was the TV because their parents were just too busy - or even too tired - to be bothered. There's something wrong with that picture.
March 19, 2009 - 4:45pmThis Comment
Susan, my sister, brother and I all grew up with televisions in our bedrooms, but for a different reason -- our father was a television repairman, and often had small sets that people abandoned instead of paying to fix. So he'd fix them anyway, bring them in the house and find a home for them. I was older by the time this started, but my siblings were probably 7 and 6. So they always had a television available in their rooms.
I'm not sure it took the place of other family time, really. We all ate dinner together, we had lots of outside time, and we are all voracious readers. But it did give us the ability to watch something other than what our parents wanted to watch in the living room (and they didn't have to be subjected to some teenybopper kid show, lol).
To this day, when one of us has trouble falling asleep, all we have to do is turn the television on. It somehow communicates safety and comfort to have a low monotonal sound in the room. The weather channel or CSPAN are perfect for this. It's ideal for those nights when the voice in my head is so loud with thought that I can't get to sleep. Somehow, having the tv on quiets that voice and I doze off pretty quickly.
I think, as with so many things, that the danger is not that there's a television IN the room, but how it's monitored. If it's on all the time, that's obviously not a good thing. But if it's used as any other toy or pastime is used -- as fun, as a reward, as an option -- I'm not against it all. And personally, I'd probably add a small DVD player, just to keep the twenty-one-hundredth viewing of "Monsters, Inc." somewhat contained...
March 19, 2009 - 8:33amThis Comment