I’m quite strict about the TV in our house. Chick has control of it for the hour after we get home from school and work but it has to be child friendly and the TV goes off at 7pm during the week. She would love a TV in her bedroom but to be honest I don’t see why she needs one. I know that lots of other Parents disagree as most of her friends have TV’s and DVD players if not laptops.
I don’t watch soaps at all whilst she is downstairs and we certainly avoid any Hollyoaks type TV. Normally she watches CBBC where all the programmes are aimed at her age group. Even with these rules in place, I feel that some of the material she watches just isn’t suitable for her at 8 years of age. Being so young she is obviously influenced by the stuff that she sees and hears everywhere (not just on the TV) but I worry about the impact this influence has on her.
Last week she was watching an episode of a programme called Tracy Beaker which is one of her favourite programmes. It’s about a girl who was brought up in a care home called the Dumping Ground and she now works there as a Carer. The new series seems to be especially hard hitting but as it’s aimed at 9-13 year olds, should this be the case? The first episode had a girl falling off the roof of the care house, fighting between the children and plenty of other drama! Chick started crying when the girl fell off the roof and then turned over temporarily to something different. As she turned back to see if it had a happy ending was when the fighting started.
Chick has bought it up a couple of times since wanting reassurance that the girl wasn’t really hurt. Now I’m not sure that I’m happy for her to watch this anymore but I’m wondering if maybe I’m living in a dream world and trying to keep her too sheltered? Do you let your kids watch whatever they want on TV or are you very strict like me? Maybe you don’t even own a TV! Do you think that I should let her watch it and see that not everyone has such a comfortable life as us? Opinions welcomed as always!!!
