Many kids spend their time watching television before they enter school.
According to the American academy of pediatrics (AAP), children aged above two years should watch not more than one to two hours daily.
If your kid is spending much time in watching television, he can face different problems, which include:
Health problems: If your kid spends much time viewing television, there are more chances to become obese.
When your kid watches television, they will not be physically active. They will sit in front of TV and eat snacks that are unhealthy, which can lead to obesity.
Behavior problems: According to the Researches, children who watch lot of television are more aggressive to deal with problems than children who watch television less. They are even more likely to engage in careless sexual behavior.
Social problems: If your kid spends much time watching television, they will not move with friends as other kids who spend less time in front of TV. These children can get easily bored, tend to be less imaginative and have very few hobbies and interests.
Academic problems: If your child is watching TV more than four hours, he will put less effort in academics, which can lead to poor results.
The question of all parents is to what extent parents should control their children watching television. Here are some Parenting tips to control television viewing in your child.
7 Tips to control children watching television:
1. Set viewing limits: You have to set viewing limits for your child to watch television. But, some parents argue that if they keep two hour limit to their children, they will use complete two hours for watching TV. So, it is up to you to set the viewing limit and how much time you allow your child to watch. You have to set clear guidelines to your child and explain how much is too much so that your child will know how much time is exactly allowed.
2. Limit your Television viewing: If you set limits to your child and watch television in your bedroom, then your child will not at all take viewing limits seriously. You have to limit your television viewing to make your child follow the limits.
3. Inform others: Inform the viewing limits of television to child’s grand parents, care takers, and the key persons in the family. This will give a clear message to your child that rules are followed consistently. You can also inform to neighbors and friends so that they can also help by limiting the television timings of your child when he visits their homes.
4. Encourage to record favorite shows: Pre-planning can make to view appropriate shows. Ask your child to record their favorite show and allow him to watch at the right timings by fast forwarding the commercial advertisements. This way, the amount of time to watch that show can be reduced.
5. Refuse to provide own TV to your child: If you provide TV in your child’s bedroom, they watch more television than other children who do not have TV in their bedroom.
This watching of television takes place in the late evenings, when you think that your child is sleeping.
Children watching television is not preferable at that time because the shows which are aired may not be recommended for children. The other problem with late night viewing of television is their daily sleep routine will be disturbed, leading to insomnia.
6. Relocate the television: If your television exists in a prime place that is attractive to every one including children, shift it to a less appealing place. You can shift it to downstairs recreation room where your kids often complaint that the place is too stinky. Every one watches the television in comfortable positions like sitting or lying in a sofa. You can remove sofa sets from the place and just keep chairs in the television room.
7. Explain the violence in TV: It is essential to explain and make them understand that TV shows are not real and there is lot of violence and that violence in real life can hurt. Television violence can also make your kid less sensitive to pain, fearful to world around them and make aggressive towards others.
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