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Kids and Screens

Screens are quite simply a part of our lives. My kids love their computers, their phones, their iTouches and TV too. I understand their love of being entertained, we all understand it, but explaining moderation to kids?

Oy.

Not all TV shows are created equal, not all websites are created equal. Can we help each other find a few of each that actually teach kids something? What do you suggest?

5 thoughts on “Kids and Screens”

  1. We love I Love Lucy and the Marx Brothers on dvd. They’re simple, funny, inoffensive and enjoyable. I manage to work in quite a few history lessons while and after we watch.

    1. History lessons from I Love Lucy?

      I want to hear more about this. The only thing I’d be able to tell my kids
      is “the censors wouldn’t let them sleep in the same beds.” Or “Lucy was a
      revolutionary because she was pregnant in public” and “Look how pointy the
      bras were back then”

      1. Oh gosh, we talk about what it was like to travel back then, what it was like to have one phone that was owned by the phone company, one black and white TV with rabbit ears, what they wore, manners, what they ate and how they cooked it, what things cost, how men worked and women “didn’t,” what it was like to have and raise children, the fact that they couldn’t say she was pregnant, how you could get a meal at the corner drugstore, how the only black person that ever appeared on that show (to my knowledge, was a train porter, how Lucy and Desi were regarded as an “interracial” couple. There’s lots to talk about.

  2. Meh. The “television is evil!” crowd are Luddites. Technology is a tool.
    We have never let my daughter watch anything we haven’t watched with her first (if it’s a rerun of the same show? She may feel like sitting through it, I do not. But repetition is reinforcement at her age.) If a show that is entertaining begins to exhibit poor values or behavior? It gets nixed.
    Some educational television is ‘hidden teaching’ – I’m all good with that. She fell for WordGirl early on and it catapulted her vocabulary past her peers. I’m supposed to think that is bad?
    Waldorf would hate me – because I don’t parent by committee.
    My child has been asking me since she was 3 1/2 if a show is “appropriate” or “inappropriate” because we discuss it.
    Schoolhouse Rock taught me more as a kid about grammar, politics, history, and math every Saturday morning as a kid than I was learning in public school. Most of the songs are still in my & my husband’s heads. http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/index.html This is bad?
    Seriously.
    Reading is good. But if your child is reading bad content? Ugh.
    Television is good. But if your child is watching bad content? Ditto.
    Parenting is the ACT of raising our children. Exposing them to useful information is a good thing.

  3. Our kids do not watch TV at all during the week but on the weekends the first thing they want to and expect to do is watch TV. Netflix is great, you can stream movies, TV series without the commercials YEAH! We have also taped American Idol, Cake Boss. With DVR, there are a lot of options.

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