How TV Affects Your Child

It’s way too easy to plop our kids in front of the TV. With our newborn and third child in the house, we’ve been doing this more often with our 5 and 3 year old. They’ve also gotten into pbskids.org and are constantly asking to be on the computer. Of course screen time has it’s positive advantages.  We can thank LeapFrog’s Letter Factory for helping our oldest learn her alphabet sounds and launch her into reading.  But too much screen time can reach a point of diminishing returns. No matter what, engagement with a window of light means a lack of human-to-human engagement, which is always by far the best life tool there is.  My wife and I even get sucked into the trap of vegging on the couch when we could be doing something a little more enlightening or relationship building.

Perhaps I need to get back on my Boycott TV kick.  Hmmm.  In my opinion, we’d all be better off if we trashed recycled our TVs.  I’m definitely preaching to myself as well since my wife and I love watching TV on hulu.com and rent movies all the time.

I’ll close with the lyrics from the song “Throw it all Away” from one of my all time favorite groups, Toad the Wet Sprocket:

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Throw It All Away
Lyrics by Glen Phillips.

take your cautionary tales
take your incremental gain
and all the sychophantic games
and throw ’em all away

burn your tv in your yard
and gather ’round it with your friends
and warm your hands upon the fire
and start again

take the story you’ve been sold
the lies that justify the pain
the guilt the weighs upon your soul
and throw ’em all away

tear up the calendar you bought
and throw the pieces to the sky
confetti falling down like rain
like a parade to usher in your life

take the dreams that should’ve died
the ones that kept your life awake
when you should’ve been all right
and throw ’em all away

with the time i waste on the life i never had
i could’ve turned myself into a better man

’cause there ain’t nothing you can buy
there is nothing you can save
to fill the hole inside your heart
so throw it all away
won’t fill the hole inside your heart

help me to empty out this house
all i’ve gathered all these days
and thought i couldn’t do without
and throw it all away