We're all happy until it's TURNING OFF TIME!

Am I the only parent who loves TV until it's time to turn it off?  My son, previously beaming, chatty, delightful to be with, turns into a howling monster - even after following all the recommended guidelines and common-sense rules - for-warning, making a pact at the start of the TV watching, reminding that the the TV will be turned off etc.  (See the ehow guide here for some basic principles).  It's as if I'm to be punished for the brief moment of serenity gained from him watching TV.  When will I remember that the pain aint worth the gain?!!!

I did a google search to find other people's experiences of this phenomena and didn't find that much, surprisingly.  "Celebrity mum" Coleen Nolan, writes in the Mirror about her daughter having a tantrum at the new house rules which state only one hour surfing the web per night.   And The National Literacy Trust provides an insightful and engaging diary of a mother dealing with her daughter's TV addiction.  Two and a half year old Ava regularly watches 5 hours of tv a day and screams when it is turned off.  The NLT give her some helpful hints on how to cure this and by the end of two weeks Ava's a reformed character.

I'm sure there are a lot more parents out there with real stories of their real children turning into monsters at the order to "turn it off".  How do you deal with it?  Send me your ideas...

(Image from http://kiwimagonline.com/kiwilog/short-parenting-articles/better-tv)

How bad is tv for my little one?

An article in the Mail today claims that toddlers who watch tv are potentially forming a life-time habit.  Take a look at the article yourself here.  Well, is a life-time of enjoying watching tv such a bad thing?  My son doesn't watch TV in a dull, vegetative state - he takes things in from it - like ideas, vocabulary, stories and concepts.  He also takes pleasure from it.  If he continues to do this all his life, then is it such a bad thing?  Why is TV considered to be such a bad thing, but listening to audio tapes or stories from books considered to be such a good thing?  My son likes books and audio stories too, but getting moving images to boot is fantastic for him.
For me, the worst thing about TV, is that I get temper-tantrums or utter despair when the TV needs to be turned off.  Whatever moments of peace I gained when the TV was on, is taken away as soon as the TV is off - especially if it is near the end of the day and he is tired.  So, although the Mail article suggests parents let their kids watch tv to give their selfish selves some moments of me time (tut, tut, not allowed) it actually does come at a price for me, and I'm sure other parents too. 
So, how do you let your kids watch tv without life without tv becoming too painful?  Ideas much appreciated.

My Kid Loves TV - intro blog

Hello,
I'm writing a blog for the first time - so do excuse any mistakes or faux pas - I'm a quick learner, so hopefully will get the hang of this quite soon...

Anyway, a bit about me - I'm a mother of two - just had my second sprog 8 weeks ago and am currently off work with baby and my three and half year old son. Before first and second-time motherhood I worked in TV and multi-media, most recently producing the web element of battlefront.co.uk. And now I'm at home I have decided to keep my hand in all things media by keeping a blog - a blog that connects my two current work interests - motherhood and the media. And how am I going to do that? you wonder... Well, it's simple really. My son absolutely loves tv and could watch it from dusk til dawn. And I'm constantly wondering whether him watching tv is a good thing or a bad thing. He does pick up a lot of vocab and ideas from it, but it does feel like cheat parenting (he is so engrossed when watching tv it is like pressing an off button for me and getting an hour of so of blissful peace...) So how good or bad is tv for him? From now on I am going to write a blog about how my son watches tv, what he watches, what he gains from it and get your opinions about kids watching tv too. I will also branch out into kids using the kids websites too - being a modern multi-platform mum - but let's start with tv first.

So, at the moment my son is watching Mr Tumble on CBBEEBies. Before that he watched I can Cook, with Katy, which I was a bit disapointed to note was a repeat - i remember the one about asparagus fritatta. How often do they repeat these programmes, I wonder, and do they justify it by saying something like "kids like and learn from repetition..." although it's no doubt just to save money and cos they think kids won't complain. What has he learnt from I can Cook? then. The thing that most springs to mind is hand-washing. He merrily washes his hands now before cooking and eating, singing about slippy dippy soap - so that's a good thing to pick up. He also told me that my new sparkly hairclips were like Katy's, and I did observe her today with some rather nice hairclips that I'd never noticed before. I can't actually ask him anything at the moment about the programmes, I've realised, because he is so absorbed that I would just be told off for interrupting him. In fact the only time he ever acknowledges his new baby sister is to shout "she's crying and she's RUINING my tv!" so I don't think questionning him about Katy or Mr Tumble is going to go down very well right now... Will quiz him later and report in my next blog.

General points about tv - if he watches too much - say over an hour and a half, then there will inevitably be a tantrum when it comes to turning the tv off. Generally, it works better to let him watch a set amount of tv and to give him plenty of advance notice about when it has to come off. Also, I have to let him press the button to turn the tv off, otherwise all hell breaks loose. Much better to empower him with turning off the TV.

He loves role-playing different characters he watches. At the moment he is really into lazy town and he is always either Stephanie or Sporticus and myself and my husband have to play the other characters. Since neither of us have ever watched the programme it is hard to know how the characters are meant to act, but he doesn't seem to mind if we act out of character!

He only watches Cbeebies and CBBC at the moment, but i guess i will have to show him some other channels to get a fair reflection of kids' media. He finds Waverloo and In the Night Garden "boring" and "babyish" although it may have been me who coined those phrases and put him off those progs (cos I don't like them). When these progs come on he changes the channel to CBBC. Changing the channels has at least taught him the numbers 7, 0 and 1 on the remote control. I think these were the first numbers he learnt, in fact! On CBBC he doesn't like Newround, but likes the dramas and reality adventure programmes, even though I don't think he understands everything that goes on in them.

Anyway, I think this is enough for my first blog, so going to go now and will reveal more in my next blog.

Thanks,

Jo