Overall, I think I’m a good parent. But, I know there are some things I do wrong when raising my two daughters.
One of these things is letting them watch too much television. I do restrict my children (especially my youngest) to certain shows. But, the television is admittedly turned on more than it is turned off.
This actually became a bit of a problem when it came to my oldest daughter. When she was younger, we let her have a television in her bedroom. And, as she got older, I couldn’t help but notice she would spend almost all day in there and, after a while, I decided I needed to take steps to get her to cut back.
My first thought was to remove the television from her room completely. But, at least until we get the playroom done, my wife and I do enjoy the convenience of having a place to send both kids to watch TV when we want to watch a movie or they want to watch something we don’t. This is why I took three other steps instead.
The first thing I did was set a strict time limit using an egg timer. I originally started out limiting my daughter to a certain number of episodes. But, this didn’t work because my daughter always found ways around it. Sometimes she would pick a show with longer episodes. Or, she would start an episode that was half over and claim it didn’t count.
This is when I started using the egg timer. Now she only gets the television for a set amount of time and, once the timer goes off, she needs to turn the television off. She will still argue with me if her show isn’t over. But it isn’t as easy for her to win that argument (though I still will occasionally let her finish an episode if it’s almost over).
The second thing I did was make her earn her television time. A half hour of helping to clean the house earns her a half hour of television time. Or, if she wants to watch TV for an hour, she first has to read a book for an hour. Doing this makes her television viewing more of a privilege rather than something she is entitled to just because she has a TV in her room.
In addition, when I make her read, she will often end up reading for much more than an hour and even forgetting all about watching TV. That, of course, is a nice bonus.
The last thing I did was find other activities for her. Last year, my wife and I joined our local YMCA so our daughter could take ballet lessons and use the pool. And, recently, we signed her up for ice skating lessons.
Those things get her out of the house so she has less time to be bored and watching TV. And, more importantly, she’s getting some extra exercise and discovering new hobbies.
Before I made these changes, my daughter was watching two hours worth of television in her room each night and more on weekends. Now, she only watches it, at most, a half hour on school nights and only about two or three hours over the weekend. If you have a child that watches too much television, I recommend trying these steps.