TV For Kids Not Always Bad, Experts Say

Jennifer Cole can barely keep up with her five boys, who range in age from 4 to 13.

In between running them to soccer and lacrosse, and making sure each one of them has showered and been fed, Cole said the last thing she can do is keep track of what they are watching on television.

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"I don't care what everyone says about always knowing what your child is doing 24 hours a day," she said. "I'd like to see them understand the calendar on my refrigerator."

While Cole said she isn't exactly parking her boys in front of the TV, she said they each watch their share.

But she's not worried, because she said she talks openly with them about life and keeps them involved and busy with activities, so TV is not a big part of their life.

Elizabeth Berger, author of "Raising Kids With Character," believes that is the most important thing parents can do to not let television become an issue in their lives.

"The parent's mission is to establish a home where human relationships come first, and where each person communicates richly with the others about all aspects of his or her life -- both inner and outer," she said. "When homes operate on with these values in place, the issue of TV tends to disappear."

Don't Blame TV

While Berger, a child psychologist, believes that TV violence and sexuality are not constructive for children, she said there is too much of a tendency to blame the TV rather than adult society.

When children aren't spoken to about violence, she said, it could present a problem.

Dr. Don Shifrin, co-chair of the American Academy Of Pediatrics Communications Council, said it is important to communicate with your children. He believes the words "kids, do not try this at home" are lost on most kids, especially when they see skateboards, bikes and extreme stunts on TV.

"Look at the success of the MTV 'Jackass' series, and the highway stunt from the movie 'The Program,' which resulted in one teen dying before the scene was deleted from the movie," he said.

He said the violence and pain seen on television are mostly sanitized, glamorized and normalized and that becomes the children's mindset.

"I have seen adolescents shot in the emergency room actually complain that they did not know getting shot would hurt so much," Shifrin said.

He highly suggests talking children about what they are seeing.

"If you see something bad, explain that to your children with real life situations, such as 'That was mean, we would never say that to out friends,' or, 'Hitting does not solve anything,'" he said.

Berger said children learn to participate in the grown-up world by mimicking what they see. But, she said, they are more likely to mimic adults with whom they have a personal relationship, including the adult's good judgment.

"A child who has been helped to understand that 'we don't hit' in real life will be less likely to mimic the hitting that he sees on TV," she said.

Berger also believes sometimes TV can be a good thing.

"There are occasionally excellent programs for children and excellent programs that adults and children can watch together," she said.

The rest of the content she relates to junk food and said there is certainly a place for junk food in every diet.

"It's just that a healthy diet can't be all junk food," she said.

Watch How You React

Although Shifrin will always recommend turning the TV off, he said there are things parents can do, aside from talking to children about how programs relate to their family's values.

He said watching your own use of television and your reactions in front of your children is important.

"'Kill the quarterback' has a totally different meaning to a 5-year-old that can't differentiate fantasy from reality," he said.

One thing Berger doesn't recommend doing is getting in a battle with your child over television watching.

She said setting television rules is just unproductive and is a game the parent is unlikely able to win.

"The child just goes to a neighbor's house or turns on his computer to accomplish the same goal. The parent then has set up the TV as something especially delicious and desirable and the parent as the villain," she said.

What About Infants?

Shifrin believes, however, that children under the age of 2 should almost never be exposed to television.

There is nothing wrong with allowing a child to be in front of the TV for a few minutes while parents take a break or attend to a phone call, she said, but children should be mostly involved with human beings.

And that includes those Baby Einstein videos and others similar to it.

"We know that children thrive on learning from an interested and interactive caretaker. No program can match that," Shifrin said. "Einstein never watched TV, nor did Mozart."

"There is nothing that these videos provide for a child that the child cannot get out of banging two old pie pans together," Berger said.

In fact, Berger believes the real problem is what gets missed when the TV is on.

"The real issue is the void in families and communities that TV apparently fills up," she said. "If we fill the void with healthy family life and healthy community life, I think TV will lose importance."

Berger recommends helping children live a balanced, active life and form deep relationships with family and friends.

"When you get all done with that, there isn't much time left for TV," she said. And if there is, watching a little won't hurt.

"In this context, if the kids want to watch some foolish violent action film for a while just to zone out and relax, it isn't going to do them any harm," she said. Blog Post:

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