How to Get Kids to Watch Less TV
We've been noticing a disturbing trend with our seven-year-old lately. He sometimes simply "zones out" when he should be paying attention to an adult who is talking. Tasks like reading and writing no longer hold his interest. He's doing the bare minimum on schoolwork and craft activities, and he'll call many things "boring."It's become clear to us that there's one main culprit: television. Up until now we've been fairly liberal with his TV watching, and we now realized that too much television has likely given him a short attention span and he now feels that everything must entertain him or he just won't pay it any attention.
We've decided to do set a number of policies to curb his television watching.
#1: He can only watch on Friday and Saturday nights. Limiting TV watching to special times of the week make viewing more of a treat and eliminates it as a choice to fill the time whenever he wants.
#2: Watching is limited to movies on DVD that we approve. Even during his new limited viewing hours, he can only choose from movie titles that we approve. Too much of what's on broadcast or cable television is filled with commercials and so frantically paced. Empty-calorie television, we call it.
#3: Since it wouldn't be fair for us to eliminate TV watching for most of the week without giving him activities to replace it, we've created a "Fun Book."
This folder consists of about a dozen pages, each focused on an activity we know he enjoys (or should enjoy). Big headers across the top say "READ," "WRITE," "BUILD," "CRAFTS," "SPORTS," etc.
Under each header, we listed a number of suggestions for going about the activity. Under "READ" we listed a number of his favorite books, either by actual title or type of book. Under "BUILD" we wrote "create a new Bionicle" and "build new vehicles and forts for your action figures out of Legos," and so forth.
We keep the "Fun Book" in a central spot in the home and encourage him to consult it whenever he seems restless or declares "I'm bored," which thankfully is happening less and less often.
And sure, there are times when he still wishes that he could turn on the television, but we simply remind him to consult the "Fun Book," and we add new ideas to it when we think of them.
If only we had thought of this years ago.