From the viewpoint of child development theories, why should kids not have a TV in their bedroom?
I am not sure, maybe the whole lack of control of what they watch. Same reason they should not have a computer with the internet in their room. My children have limits on what they are allowed to watch. I like to follow the parental ratings, they are there for a reason. They do have tvs in their rooms. And it is made very clear what is allowed and what is forbidden. Anything I don’t find appropriate, they don’t watch. They mainly watch cartoons and Hannah Montana, etc.
November 18th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I am not sure, maybe the whole lack of control of what they watch. Same reason they should not have a computer with the internet in their room. My children have limits on what they are allowed to watch. I like to follow the parental ratings, they are there for a reason. They do have tvs in their rooms. And it is made very clear what is allowed and what is forbidden. Anything I don’t find appropriate, they don’t watch. They mainly watch cartoons and Hannah Montana, etc.
References :
November 18th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Depends on which child developmental theorist you talk to? I only know a few of the traditional ones e.g. Piaget, Vygotsky, Bandura, I would say in general if there IS a reason for children not to have a TV, they would say something like: Play is a crucial part of natural development, e.g. by playing with blocks, children can learn the different shapes (we’re talking about very young children here, which I don’t think is the case for your question). Socially, they are dealing with people (parents/other children) rather than just staring at a TV being exposed to media portrayals/stereotypes, which they may have the potential to model. That would be the basics of most child development theories, and I suppose if you want to apply it to children that are older, pre-teens or so on, the kids might ‘miss out’ on crucial parts of their childhood i.e. developing social skills, exploration skills, curiosity/questioning-the-world skills… etc or something like that…. if they spend all day on TV and believe what they see on TV is real?
And of course, there’s the whole thing about health effects like obesity of watching too much TV, instead of ‘getting outside and moving’.
My recommendation (biased, yes), in an ideal world: Get them a bookshelf, give them a few good books, get them reading (or even read together) and using their imagination.
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