By Stacy DeBroff

Limiting TV and electronics is essential to nurturing creativity.

• Our children live in the age of the digital playground, with electronic devices luring our children into hours of solitary, sedentary entertainment. Kids often bury themselves in electronic games for solitude and freedom from adult micromanaging.
• Never has the comforting, passive distraction of the computer, television, or electronic entertainment been so readily available for our children. The average American household now has three televisions, two VCRs, three radios, two tape players, two CD players, a video game player, and a compu
• With all this technology in our homes, children have the entertainment they need without venturing outside to play. Even playdates become consumed by the latest video game, hand-held electronics adventure, or TV shows.
• Left to her own devices, your child may opt to amuse herself electronically for hours on end. She may simply shut out the outside world in favor of such entertaining escapes as television or Gameboy. Children now watch an average of 3 to 5 hours of television each day, which ends up totaling billions of hours each year all our children spend sacked out on the couch.
• The time your child spends plugged-in is time she does not spend exercising her body, expanding her mind, or exploring her environment. Moreover, time glued to the television makes your child the passive absorber of often violent and commercial television programming. Excessive television has recently been linked with long-term behavioral problems in children, such as violent behavior, obesity, shorter attention spans, decreased sociality, poor performance in school, sexual precociousness, and drug use. Quite the litany, and enough to strike fear in any parent’s heart.

ESTABLISHING FAMILY RULES

• Set limits on TV, computer, and electronic games to get your child to engage in more active, rather than passive, play. While in limited doses, television enables your child to both relax and keep up with cultural references by peers, even educational television and games limit your child’s imagination. When the TV goes off, your child can rediscover imaginary play with Legos, blocks, toys, and board games.

• Pick one week to mark down exactly how much TV your child watches. You will likely find yourself amazed at how quickly it adds up when you factor in morning shows or cartoons, movies, videos, and a week’s worth of time on the couch.

• Monitor the shows your child watches regularly. Catch the show once to make sure that the content and messages are what you consider to be age- and values-appropriate. Talk with your child about the show afterwards, and ask questions to get a more in-depth understanding of her thinking about what you saw together.

• Discuss the reasons why there are commercials on TV and how advertising tries to get you to buy toys and other things. Teach your child how to be both critical and skeptical of the advertising messages, and to distinguish commercials from other types of television programming. Point out what exaggerations the advertisers use. Even toddlers can begin to acquire a skeptical, savvy approach to commercial messaging by manufacturers.
• Be clear about what stations your child is allowed to watch and what stations are forbidden.

• Rather than having your child channel-surf in search of an appealing show, map out in advance what programs she wants to watch. Agree to turn the TV off when the agreed upon show ends.

• Set limits on TV and electronics, and then make sure those devices stay switched off while your child finds something else to do. You have to brace yourself for the initial protests and glares. Moreover, you have to make sure that turning off the TV doesn’t mean turning on the computer or video games.

• Place fun activities or toys near your television set to ease your child away from watching. Plan activities or games for the time of day your child is most likely to watch TV or to play electronic games.

• Do not make the spot in front of the television the most comfortable place in the house. If your television is in your family room, where everyone tends to congregate, arrange the room to make something other than the TV the focal point. Have an area for games or a comfortable chair with good lighting next to your child’s bookshelf. Teach your child planned, deliberate viewing, only turning on the TV when you have something specific to watch, and turning it off right afterwards.

• Assuming that your family will not be completely television-free, try the following to control the amount and quality of TV your child watches: Be specific and consistent about what your child is allowed to watch. Your child will find limits easiest if there are set rules as opposed to day-by-day arbitrary decisions about TV limits. Discuss with your partner how much, if any, daily TV you want your kids to have. Rules also help eliminate endless begging for TV. Set a daily or weekly limit.

• Some examples of family rules to consider:

• No morning TV during the week until your child is dressed, has eaten breakfast, and has brushed her teeth.

• No TV during mealtimes.

• No TV on school days, both during the afternoon and at night. Or no TV on school days until all the homework and a half-hour of leisure reading has been done. Or limit TV shows on school days to special programs.

• For one hour a day—your child chooses when and what she wants to watch.
• No TV before completing household tasks.

• Allot your child a particular number of TV-viewing hours per week, and let her choose how she uses them with your supervision. Unused hours could be cashed in for a small treat.

• Use a kitchen timer to set a time limit on your child’s computer or electronic game time. When the buzzer goes off, time’s up. Make sure your child understands that the computer or game must be turned off and that it can be saved for another day.

• Do not put a television set in your child’s room.

• Do not allow any TV in the morning if you find yourself scrambling to get your child off in time to day care, activities, or school.

• Offer trade-offs: For every hour of TV time, your child has to spend an hour running around in the back yard or doing some other form of physical activity.

• Limit TV time for your entire family and model the habits you want your child to adopt. Set a good example yourself with your own viewing habits and by not leaving the TV on as background noise.

• Keep TV-time as healthy as possible. Make up physical games to play during the commercials, like a jumping jack contest, and do not put out too many snacks for your child to munch on while she watches TV.

• Pick one day a week or one week a year when nobody in the family can watch the TV. National TV Turn-off Week is scheduled for every April. Make this a celebratory time, with family game nights and outings. Your child might just learn how easy it is to live without it.

• Pretend for one night that you’re living in the 1800’s and have no electricity.

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