Teaching Kids To Screen Their Own TV Time

Useful Tips For Parents

When parents limit their children's TV time they have to make difficult decisions about  “where to draw the line”. Forbidding children to watch TV is not the answer, because they could do it at their friends' house or somewhere else. The best way is to teach children to choose the right programs and to limit the time spent in front of the TV.

Here are some ways of teaching how to select good TV programs:

•   Parents and children should watch programs together with their children, and have a discussion about the topic, the characters, the attitudes and behaviors pictured in the program.
•   Discuss questions such as, "Was it violent? What did you learn from watching the program?  How did you feel after watching the program?  What was the language like?  How were the different characters portrayed?  Would such characters make good role models for our society?  What kinds of values were being taught? What do you think of that kind of behavior? What should he have done or said differently?"
•  Help children understand the difference between real life and fiction.
• Parents should also show good example by choosing appropriate films
  
• Help children understand that everything they see on TV(even the news!) is just someone else's point of view. It is not always the right way  or the real way the world works.
  
• Encouraging children to watch educational channels, for example Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel or Animal Planet    
                                  
                                                                          
                                    

                                                                          [image source] http://www.shopping.com/xPP-Standard_Televisions -~PG-3  &  -~PG-1

• Teach children that cartoon channels are not always good for children, they might show violence or rudeness to parents                      
               
  

[image source]http://www.shopping.com/xPP-Standard_Televisions -~PG-7

•   parents and children can do role plays trying out real life situations, to test how easy or difficult is to take the right decisions (for example if their friends want to drink, smoke, or watch inappropriate films)

Teach children about advertisements:

• Teach children that the purpose of commercials is to sell things that we may not need
  
• Teach children about the different techniques used in them to convince people to buy their product
• Use the mute button during commercials so that the ads will have less effect.
• Use commercial time for getting snacks or use the time to get children active by having them exercise and stretch.
• Choose commercial-free television whenever possible.
  

Other tips:

• Suggest healthy alternatives to television – and support them.  In order to prevent too much TV watching it is important to find other options such as reading, painting, making crafts, sports, cooking, and going for walks.
• Limit the amount of TV time, to only the weekends if it's possible
• Don't put TVs in kids’ bedrooms because they can become a distraction from doing their schoolwork.
• Tell parents  of your children's friends and babysitters about your TV watching rules. 
• Don't leave the TV on unless you are watching it.
• Don't use the TV as a "baby-sitter".       
                                                                                 
                                       [image source]www.barelyfitz.com/.../ pics/watching-tv.jpg          [image source]www.jakking.typepad.com/.../ tv_kidsyuki.jpeg
• Tape your child's favourite shows for watching later.  You can erase commercials this way and play the tape at the right time for your family.
• Make your own video library.  Young kids like to watch shows more than once and you can choose good quality educational programs for them.
• Borrow from the library or rent good educational movies for your children.