NPR: Mom, Pass My Rattle and the TV Guide

Mom, Pass My Rattle and the TV Guide

As I was going through the ritual of making sure my water was running, my phone service activated and my electricity turned on, I was asked a question by the woman helping me work my way down the list of new house to-dos: Would you like cable TV?

I paused. In Boston, I had digital cable, On Demand, 3 million channels, you name it. I thought a long five seconds. No, I said, I don't want cable. I don't want TV in my house. On the surface, I did it for my four children, who were turning into zombies despite my efforts to restrict their viewing time.

I wondered if I had made the right decision, and then I saw this Toronto Globe and Mail piece on a University of Washington study that shows children as young as 3 months are watching TV. (No word on if they can reach the phone to vote for their favorite "American Idol" contestant.) By the time they are 2, 90 percent of them are watching "Teletubbies," or "Sesame Street" or "Dora the Explorer." Now, a U.S. company wants to launch a 24-hour channel for babies: BabyFirstTV.

On the Internet, no one can hear you scream.

Then a few hours ago, I saw this piece on CBS: 14-year-olds who watch three or more hours of TV a day are "far more likely to have a negative attitude toward school, skip homework and to have trouble paying attention than kids who watch one hour or less a day. In turn, kids in that group are less likely to go to college." So I'm feeling much better about my decision now.

Want to know the real reason I got rid of TV? For me. I was one of those parents who just turned on the darn thing whenever I was busy and the kids were trying to get my attention. Only they got hooked, and whenever I did want to do something, they just wanted to watch TV. Now, we'll all have to make different decisions about how to use our time.

3:03 PM ET | 05- 8-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

We've got an 11-month-old at home. My wife and I don't let her watch TV, though my mother is constantly suggesting it since she did it with me and think I turned out just fine. (Though I would argue it gave me a really poor attention span.) What was I saying?

ANYWAY, we don't plan to let her watch TV until she's at least two years old, but even now she wants to watch it. If we're feeding her on one side of the living room and I'm watching CNN, my wife struggles to maintain her attention. So I find myself shutting off the TV a lot more when it seems she's sneaking a peek.

PBS has a good resource on kids' consumption of media. Notice how their suggestions start at age three. That should tell us something.

Sent by andy carvin | 5:09 PM ET | 05-08-2007

Congratulations on getting rid of the TV. In the past six years, we have had cable for one year, last year. When the contract expired, we canceled the service. In that one year, we were again turning into zombies as well. We also found that we were only watching repeats of shows from many years before. The money that we save is now donated to our local NPR radio stations as well as a few other causes. As far as what we do with our time, it is more than filled. There is a television in our home (only 1), and it is only used for an occasional DVD, often borrowed from our public library. I think that we are both better for it, and I don't mind that I can't add anything to the work conversations on the latest "American Idol" episode.

Sent by Valerie Martin-Pearson | 5:54 AM ET | 05-09-2007

If NPR wanted to do EVEN MORE of a public service, they would do stories on the growing body of data that shows TV as a strong contender for the cause of BOTH ADD/ADHD !! AND !! Autism.

(Editor's note: Please see the following paper on the connection between TV and autism from the Johnson School at Cornell University, sent to us by the author of this post.

http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/faculty/profiles/waldman/autpaper.html)

Sent by Bruno | 9:22 AM ET | 05-09-2007

We found ourselves in this dilemma after The Boy was born due more to financial concerns than if it's best for him *paying $50 a month was insane).

But after doing some research, we figured that we would not let him watch any TV until he was two.

It's the best decision we've ever made.

Sure, we still watch movies on the weekends, have a few Thomas the Crack Engine (our name) DVDs, and we all love football in the falls.

But other than that, it's music on the radio and family interaction time.

I think you -- and even your kids, after they get over the initial shock -- will come to that same opinion.

Sent by Mark D | 12:47 PM ET | 05-09-2007

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