THE BOOB TUBE CONTROVERSY

 

It’s difficult to decide whether or not to allow your child to have a television in their bedroom. There are a lot of good arguments as to why you shouldn’t. It can distract them from homework, cause them to not spend as much time with the family, or just enable them to have unrestricted access to things that you might not want them to have access to. With all this said, I still believe that I will allow my child to have a television in their bedroom, just the way my Mom did. 

My Mom allowed each of us to have our own televisions, but, we were not allowed to have cable access. We each had our own VCR and when they came out, a DVD player. My parents had expectations of us though. We have always had family suppers, we were expected to do our homework, be in social activities and sports. We each had chores and needed to get them done before we were able to watch television. The movies that we watched were “checked out” from our parent’s media collection or the library. But on special occasions, we were able to rent a movie.

I think that the problem that parents run into with having television in their child's bedroom is in not having structured ground rules and expectations in place. Many of the things on television are not appropriate for young children to see and often children do not have the self control to turn the television off to do things like homework and sleep. The problem is simple, give them the television, and let them earn the right to view appropriate media without giving them more control then they can handle.