My kids are 9 and 7. Never will they have a tv in their rooms. Heck, husband and I don’t even have one. Our house has 2 tvs - one in the family room and one upstairs in the loft/playroom where the kids can occasionally watch their own movie, have a sleepover, etc.
To me, it’s not so much a matter of what shows they are watching or how much they are watching - it’s more an issue of how much potential isolation and distance we are setting up. Maybe not a problem now, but at 12 and 13 it could be. I want tv to be something we WATCH at times - not a constant background. Same reason our computers stay in the kitchen and family rooms.
Don’t have TVs in my kid’s bedroom. Don’t really need to, when the kids want to watch TV they watch it in the living room or in our bedroom, we got a DVRs, everyone gets their little bit of time to watch what they want. Kids don’t watch that much, don’t have tv time limit rules. Video games, on the other hand, I got to pry those things (multiple devices) out of their little hands from time to time.
I have a TV in my bedroom…but we only have two TVs in the house. I really have no other place to put the extra TV and sometimes I want to watch something and he wants to watch something different. But we only have Netflix or DVDs, so the TV is never just “on” for background noise, so we don’t have the issue of bright light until bed.
That being said, I’d not want to put a TV in the child’s bedroom. I don’t even think kids should be exposed to as much TV as they are. It’s kind of freaky actually, my SO’s niece and nephew play like crazy until the TV goes on and then they stop everything and stare at it like slack-jawed yokels. And very often the only thing that stops the whining is Daddy’s iPhone.
But I am not a parent, so maybe it’s just a normal thing for parents to do. Who am I to judge?
You’re painting an excluded middle the size of Canada. And if someone is having a business meeting and eventually one of his subordinates grabs that first someone’s cellphone and switches it off saying “we NEED to get this solved, and that means you NEED to pay attention to THIS ROOM”, that someone definitely needs to get his head out of his electronics. Yes, I’ve seen it happen.
Hardly relevant to “give kids electronics and they’ll hole up in their rooms instead of making friends.” Which, again, is particularly amusing on a message board on the Internet.
I would argue it isn’t a horrible thing either. A one year old won’t be turning it on and watching when they are supposed to be napping. There are good visually stimulating programs available for young children. Unless they bought it 10 years before giving it, it won’t be a weight hazard to be concerned about toppling over.
As said in an earlier post, I’ve never restricted my kids viewing and they have all turned out very well. We have 7 TV’s, 4 laptops, 2 tablets, 5 smart phones, and one desktop. Last night my kids and I spent the evening on the deck watching the storm roll in and just talking.
I sort of have the feeling that when you restrict something as normal as “screen time” you risk creating the “forbidden fruit” syndrome and when the kids are finally let loose they will go overboard in response. When they grow up where it is normal and ok, and they can take it or leave it they make good decisions on what is worth watching and what isn’t.
Of course, please take this as just my opinion and experience… I know it also depends a lot on the kids. My son has a friend who has no restrictions on video gaming (nor does my son) but his friend spends ALL of his time playing, where my son plays maybe an hour a month at most.
Just pointing out that these three guys, like me, did not have “first computers” since no such thing existed when they were growing up. Didn’t seem to hurt them any.
Not having a TV in the bedroom is different from being restricted in TV watching. It is perfectly possible for a kid to watch in a family area, where the shows can be monitored if necessary.
I don’t have any kids yet, but I think I’ll probably take much the same stance my mom did in raising me: Kids can have whatever electronic devices they want, if they get it themselves. If a device has a positive value (educational, or safety, or the like), the parents can get it for the kids. If the parents feel like it, they can also get the kids things that don’t have such value and are just for fun, but that’s entirely discretionary, and the kid is in no way entitled to any such thing (and in fact is less likely to get it if they think they are entitled).
Two major benefits to this approach: First, it cuts way down on the whining, as well as the amount of clutter that accumulates in the house. Second, when the kid does go to the effort to buy something him or herself, it provides a real sense of accomplishment. I still remember how proud I was, after saving up babysitting money, when I was able to buy my own Nintendo.
I would not put a TV in my daughter’s bedroom while she’s still young. I might let her have one when she’s older (teenage years), provided she doesn’t stay up all night binging on shows.
As a young kid (my daughter’s 5), though, they’ll watch TV until they turn to zombies. My daughter already watches a bit too much, probably, especially on the weekends if we’re doing chores.
About the only time she can watch TV in her room is if she wakes up really early on a weekend, I’ll often let her grab my old Android tablet (she’s not allowed on my iPad mini) and watch stuff from Netflix on it. She’s really good about only watching things that are appropriate for her, and it lets my wife and I sleep in an extra hour or two.
errr… Yes they did, maybe not the desktop personal computers you may be familiar with but they all had childhood exposure to to electronics, computers, and computer programming.
I still want to know why so many responses here equate “a television is present” with “a television is on.” We have a TV in each bedroom, one in the living room, and even a small one in the kitchen. But we collectively have infinite power over them. They are only turned on when we want them to be; they never turn on of their own accord.* The number of rooms in which a television exists does not affect the total amount of TV watching time in the slightest, which I know because the latter has stayed constant even as the former has grown.
I actually did have a TV once that turned on of its own accord from time to time. It would cycle through channels and then eventually settle on one and just stay on. It was highly creepy.
Electronics tinkering was something lots of kids did. Gates started on a PDP-10 in high school. I know PDP-10s well, and they are things you submit stuff to, unless that one had a time sharing system like the one at the MIT AI Lab. Anyhow, though Gates’ father was pretty rich, he sure as hell didn’t buy him a PDP-10. When I was in high school I used an LGP-21 which was almost mine, because I was the one who hacked on it after classes. But programming back then was more of a social event. Computers were not things you used in your room.
Gates was in Harvard at the same time I was at MIT (but I graduated ) so I know computers of that era fairly well.
Back to Skald and the OP… to keep peace with your sibling, what does it hurt to put the gift in the kid’s room. If you never turn it on or not is irrelevant.
My kids are 6 and 8; they do not (and will not) have TVs or computers in their bedrooms. Mainly because we want to be able to control what they watch and when they watch it. Their parents do not have a TV in our room either.
Well, this isn’t my crazy sister (who would have taken massive offense) we’re talking about. When she realized we’d never put the TV up, she shrugged and said something like, “Whatever, dude. Just put it in storage. I, as the mother of a 20-year-old, guarantee that you’ll want a TV for the kid in a few years. Now on to the important thing: pass me some more cheesecake.”
Besides, we don’t have a working cable outlet in that room (or the home office/guest room) and don’t intend to get one.
) so I know computers of that era fairly well.