Adam is home ill, again, today and I am sitting on the sofa as he stands watching TV and playing a game on my iPhone.
There seems to be 1000 studies with 1000 different answers as to how much ‘screen time’ is too much. And I can’t decide which way to go.
The actual issue is that Simon and I spend our lives in front of screens. He teaches computers and I’m a graphic artist which, these days, means Adobe Creative Suite and drawing with a mouse. Oh, I occasionally sketch in a book, but final drafts to finished drawings are done on a computer.
We have in this house 4 working computers, two TV based game consoles, three hand held games consoles and 2 iPhones. Hell, Simon and I met through the computer!
So how do we tell our son he can only watch TV or play on the Xbox ‘X hours a day’? Granted, I can pull the ‘Mummies and Daddies are adults and have different rules’ card, but I always hated that when I was a kid. Why do they get different rules for things like this?
Okay, so some studies have shown TV/computer time can hurt brain development. But they can’t prove it 100%. And he is learning as he watches or plays games on my iPhone. He’s learning numbers and shapes and colours on the one he’s playing right now. He learns things from CBeeBies and DVDs. So does it matter that he’s learning them from a screen?
He hardly spends all day every day in front of one. We go out at least once a day for a walk, sometimes twice. He is at nursery 3 days a week when he doesn’t see a screen from 9 am to 430 pm. He does watch some TV when he gets home, but that’s not for long before it’s time for dinner and bath and bed.
And we do other things, even when he’s home sick like today. In a bit we’re going to break out the crayons and do some colouring. We might still get out for a walk as his fever seems to be going away.
So I don’t have the final answer. He’s a long way away from using any of these items on his own, anyway. He sits with me or Simon to play games on CBeeBies website or on our iPhones. He doesn’t know how to turn on the TV. So Simon and I have some time to consider our position.
What’s your position on your kids and screen time and why?
Between 7 and 8 boys have a massive hormonal surge and they become more aggressive. Plus they are clever and know what they want to watch and how to find it. I have parental controls on my sky now and also have to monitor what he accesses with regards to You Tube.
I have found the ipad is a good medium between computer and tv – it’s has good interactive games and he loves using it. In the summer holidays we said screen until midday and then not until 6pm because I did notice if he spent to much time in front of the TV he became aggressive, bad tempered and not very giving. I think it’s a balance – TV is a great babysitter.
I found myself in almost exactly the same situation! We started keeping the TV on for Abby when she was a baby, mainly because we were adviced to keep the days noisy and night quiet. Also, we wanted her to pick up her English as soon as (we are Chinese). As you’ve pointed out, she learnt by watching CBeebies (which is very educational). She knows how to count from 0-9 by just watching The Numberjacks, and she used words we never taught her.
I think that we do have to set boundaries even if she’s learning so much. She should be spending time socialising face to face. She should learn skills by playing with her toys (creation, imagination, sharing, etc).
Another thing I can think of, is that watching too much TV and using iPhone can be bad for their eyes (for some reason, kids tend to stand right in front of the TV, I always wonder why). And iPhone (any smartphones or tablets really) can also cause sore neck and/ or sore hands.
Because of unknown effects from mobilephones, and wrong posture while using the iPhone, I’ve decided to ban my daughter from using it. We still keep the TV on throughout the day, but in between we find her playing with her toys instead. So I guess that’s not too bad!
I am in 2 minds about this too. We as parents also spend a lot of time on our computers and so do my boys. They watched a lot of CBeebies as pre-schoolers too and yet everybody says how knowledgeable they are and what a great vocab they have too. They reckon it must have been me talking to them, taking them out all the time and providing endless educational opportunities. Yes we did that but often, the comments are the result of them knowing something that I know they could only have got from the telly.
Perhaps I am lucky. They were never so absorbed in the telly that it stopped them doing something else at the same time (like their mother – I can’t just sit and watch telly either). They just tuned into it when it interested them and out again when it didn’t. Is that bad? I don’t know – it doesn’t seem to have done them any harm at all but since I can’t clone my children (what a thought!) I will never know how they would have been had I been a lot stricter on screen time.
That said, we didn’t have game consoles until they were out of the toddler years and neither of them were that interested in computers before about 4 yrs old so it was easy to limit that.
Interesting debate though.