Turning Off TV

jlotus · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 2:51 pm Post subject: Success story of TV-Free kids

Folks,

We applaud what you are doing. My wife and I sold our last television 29 years ago and have never regretted it for a moment. We raised two wonderful, active and intelligent kids without it. We are not religious fanatics or anti technology -- just thoughtful people who wanted our home to reflect our values, not those of preditory, amoral advertisers and programers. There are too many worthwhile things to do besides watch TV, not the least of which is talking to each other and relating as a family. Our kids wear being raised without TV as a badge of honor. Thanks for spreading the word.

Dave and Mary Brummel
Warrenville, Illinois

happyfamily · Guest

I was really interested to hear your success story. My girls are 5 and 6 years old. They watch tv for a couple of hours each week now, though they did watch none at all until recently. I was concerned that they might miss out on some of the young culture if they watched none at all. They are lovely children. They rarely argue, they always share and are considerate towards eachother. Perhaps I am biased, perhaps it is due to their nature, perhaps the other parenting measures that we have used happen to have been successful, but i can't help thinking that a lot of it is because they have always had eachother to play with, to learn about, and that they have never had to fight the box for the attention they needed. Forgive me if I sound smug. I consider myself to be very very lucky, to have a happy, calm (relatively) family life. It is true that on tv evening the house is more quiet than usual, but it's my opinion that more tv would have diminishing returns on peace, along with other negative effects. Why are kids always so terribly ill-tempered when you turn off the tv?
Do you really think that less tv benefits the child as a whole, and in what way. I would love to see a positive study, looking at the benefits of no tv, rather than continually studying the negative effects it has. I think this would be much more persuasive way of encouraging people to change their habits. In fact I've been seriously considering doing this myself, if there are people out there who have evidence they would like to offer.[/code]