The TV Problem

Posted by: Amy Dunkin on April 04

Like my fellow bloggers Lauren and Cathy, I also have a confession to make about my children and the TV. Sometimes when I’m helping my 9-year-old with his homework, I let the 6-year-old watch TV just to keep him from bothering us. Last night, my husband came home and found him watching SpongeBob and was not happy about it. (One thing I can say about the eating in front of the TV issue: We have a house rule that food gets consumed only in the kitchen—and we don’t keep a TV there. Our boys are both skinny, so maybe there’s a connection.)

We are now making some changes. First, we’ve unplugged the cable from the downstairs TV so there’s virtually nothing for the kids to watch on the few channels that get reception. Second, we’ve set a password to get access to the upstairs TV. (If you can’t do this on your television, you can buy an external device that lets you control access.) Finally, I’ve decided that when the older one is doing homework, I’ll make it my business to set up a project for my kindergartener at the same table so he has something more constructive to do than watching Nickelodeon cartoons.

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