How much TV should kids be allowed to watch?

When school opens next week, most parents will again regulate the viewing hours spent by their children in front of the TV set. This is good in my opinion because this is one way of teaching kids discipline. But how much or how little TV should we let children watch?

When I was growing up, my parents also tried to instill discipline on us four kids – although in a rather erratic way. In the beginning, for instance, TV viewing was limited to weekends. From Monday to Thursday, my Dad made sure that the TV set was locked. (Most TV sets then had doors.) But when my other siblings got a little older and there was only me left to discipline (I’m the youngest), they relaxed this rule a bit – until the time they did away with it completely and I was allowed to watch TV to my heart’s content. (TV was later even installed in the room I shared with my brother – with the set right in front of my bed for my viewing pleasure.)

Looking back, I sometimes still resent my parents’ rule about no TV on school days. As you can see, I grew up to be a television reviewer and chronicler and when I write about moments in TV history, I sometimes want to bang my head against the wall because there are some shows in the past that I have very little knowledge of – all because my TV viewing as a kid was regulated.

Unfortunately, unlike in the United States, we have no existing records of television here in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. From time to time therefore, I take the initiative of putting down in writing – specifically in this column – scenes I remember from old TV shows. All these are from memory – starting from the time I was about age three. (My family can attest to my good memory.) But then how do you recall in your mind something that you did not experience?

There was a period for example, when something went wrong with our TV set and – for the longest time – wasn’t getting any signal from the pre-martial law Channel 5. Well, my parents just left it like that and didn’t have the set fixed until after about year. When ABC-5 resumed operations in 1992, therefore, I wanted to write about its pre-martial law programming, nothing came to my mind.

But I’m not blaming my parents for this because, well, who would have known back then that I was eventually going to embrace this profession? Besides, their having regulated my TV viewing was part of the discipline they were then trying to teach me – and I appreciate that to this day.

Today, I suggest to parents of young children to also work out a TV viewing schedule for their kids. One rule is not to allow children to watch television until after their homework is done.

I would also like to recommend the careful selection of shows for children, except that this is quite difficult to do considering that some cartoons on TV today are even more harmful to kids than the adult dramas shown on primetime TV. Drama programs, at least, impart moral lessons – something that is sorely lacking in a lot of cartoons that are airing today on TV.

I know of a young mother from the south who allows her five-year old son to watch cartoons – except for Popeye, which she feels is too violent. Maybe she is right about this. But then, didn’t we all grow up with Popeye? However, I don’t think we all grew up with violent stories in our system, did we?

While growing up, I believe that we are all slowly being equipped with the power to discern right from wrong. Okay, we saw Popeye and Brutus pouncing on each other in all of the cartoon’s episodes. But eventually, we realized that this is not the right thing to do. Of course, the danger here is when small kids try to imitate what Popeye and Brutus do on television. In fact, this was the worry of parents of kids who regularly watched reruns of The Three Stooges in the early ’80s.

It is therefore necessary to monitor what kids are watching on TV – or if possible, have their TV viewing supervised by the parents themselves or any responsible adult. Of course, this is easier said than done because the primary reason why most parents usually allow their kids to watch TV is for them (the parents) to be able to do other things. Yes, parents often turn the TV set into a babysitter for their kids – and this is sad. When things go wrong, they blame television. This is quite unfair because kids usually spend longer hours in school then in front of the TV set. And there are other forms of entertainment for children now – like these play stations, for instance, which contain games that promote violence. Television, of course, may still influence the thinking and behavior of kids – especially if unsupervised by adults.

Perhaps one thing parents can do – if they cannot be with their kids during viewing time – is to require their children to discuss with them what they (the children) saw on TV at the end of the day. This way, the parents can point out to their children what’s good (yes, kids can also pick up good things from TV) and what’s bad.

Television is a very powerful medium of communication. However, I believe that nothing should be more powerful than the communication line between parent and child.