Reply to How much tv does your 3-5 year old watch?

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Reply to "How much tv does your 3-5 year old watch?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I do not like having the TV on during the day and my DH and I are not big TV watchers. But we have a 4 yr old and I have to lean on the TV sometimes. It's gotten much better since DC started PK and is at school 6 hours a day. But I work PT and my hours are variable and when I'm busy that's all I get done while she's at school. DH is often gone for close to 12 hours a day. I am actually proud of how little TV my kid watches because it's the one thing guaranteed to occupy her for an indefinite amount of time and that's such a gift when you are on your own with a small child for so much of the day and you have to get things done or just need a minute to think.

But it's really work to do it and I can't all the time. You have to really plan ahead and be very organized to make it work. Even if the goal is for your kid to do free play. A baby or toddler will just play with whatever and can easily entertain themselves. But a 3 or 4 or 5 year old often needs some guidance. If I can take a few minutes and set out some activities before she gets home, that can help. Or if I have some leeway with my schedule I can arrange it so the activities I'm doing when she's home are the things it's easiest to do with her. I do involve her in laundry and cooking and errands when I can. But of course there are times when that's just not efficient or realistic. And then there are so many tasks that are just me sitting on my computer paying bills, researching something for my MIL, putting together a shopping list. You can't do that while a child is saying "play with me play with me play with me I'm bored." The ability to say "here is a 25 minute episode of TV, when it's over we will go to the playground" or whatever is a godsend.

The part I hate most, though, is the way people act like letting your kid watch TV is some failure. That's insane. I don't love letting my kid watch TV simply because we don't like TV that much (I also really struggle to find decent children's programming that is age appropriate, 99% of it is just garbage or it's too scary or she just doesn't like it for whatever reason). But it's not a failure, it's survival. The standards for parents are so ridiculously high these days. I feel like we've lost all sight of what we're doing with raising kids. [/quote]

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