TV and Children

my thoughts about the television

I received an e-mail from Stephanie just the other day. She is my daughter attending Berklee College of Music. She wanted to remind me to include a page about Television on my new web site. She was in a business class and the topic was Disney and finances. Soon the entire class was remembering all their favorite Disney shows. Stephanie offered that she only recognized a few of these shows because her television time was so limited as a child. A student whom Stephanie did not even know said "no wonder you are so smart, you didn't watch TV". Another student added "I wish I hadn't watched so much, I have such a short attention span". Stephanie had e-mailed to say thanks.

I have always had a one hour a day rule regarding the television. I have seldom had any difficulty enforcing this rule. One of the keys to raising brighter children is to keep them active with activities of all types. Sports, music, clubs and a few good friends will keep children active and away from the TV.

Over the years a large portion of my income has gone to piano teachers, horseback riding instructors, dance teachers, swimming instructors, art teachers, just to name a few. The more things your child can learn to do the more ways they have to increase their self-esteem. High self-esteem can take a child anywhere they want to go in life and activities are the best way to get it. They give the child the opportunity to have many little successes. The more times your child succeeds the higher the self-esteem. There is no feeling of accomplishment watching TV. TV will seldom make a person smarter. Along with the lessons I believe clubs are great learning environments for children. We have done hiking clubs, 4-H, German club, Spanish club and speech club to name a few. Clubs combine the sense of accomplishment with learning good social skills. My ten year old has recently become interested in dog agility. It was cute watching her and her three best friends and their dogs yesterday. They had used all of our patio furniture and all the scrap lumber they could find to make a dog agility course. It was great. While I was photographing them running their dogs through this course my wife was on the internet and found a nearby club that also had a six week training session that starts in a few weeks. It looks like it's dog agility time for a while.

It is my personal feeling that watching television is just about the worst way a child could spend their time. Television and junk food seem to go hand in hand. To much television and junk food lead to weight problems. Weight problems almost always lead to low self-esteem. Do your child a favor, feed them a healthy snack and take them to a club meeting or maybe just outside to play with their friends.