Q My 10-year-old-son does very well at school and helps around the house and with his twin sisters, age 3. He has a birthday coming up and he has asked for a TV set for his bedroom. Our house is small and the noisy twins keep him from enjoying TV in the family room. My husband says Dr. Heins would not approve and said to ask you. I feel this is such a good kid he should be rewarded.
A I just came across some startling statistics from a Kaiser Family Foundation national survey published in 2005.
● The average time kids from 8 to 18 years old spend reading is 43 minutes per day.
● The average time they spend watching TV, including videos, DVDs, and prerecorded programs, is 3 hours, 51 minutes per day.
● Total computer use averages 1 hour, 2 minutes per day.
● Total time playing video games averages 49 minutes.
People are also reading…
In other words, the time our youth spend in front of some sort of a screen is many times more than the time spent in front of a book.
Sixty-eight percent of these children have a TV set in their bedroom; 31 percent have a computer.
When I was a girl, my father was what was called a radio engineer (electrical engineer now). He went from vacuum tubes to cathode ray tubes to transistors and probably would be working with microchips if he were still alive. He was provided with a TV set in Boston the year TV was introduced. There was nothing on the screen because nothing was yet being broadcast. The station alerted my father when a test pattern would be sent, and his job was to report its clarity. TV was such a novelty that neighbors came over to watch the test pattern! When programming started, our living room was filled to overflowing and my mother complained about what the crowds were doing to her furniture springs.
From a novelty to a rarity to more than two-thirds of America's kids with TV in their bedroom all took place in less than six decades. Early TV was a community event. When my children came along, TV was a family event and we watched the moon landing together. Now screen time is displacing kids not only from books but also from connections to others.
It's difficult for me to think of many good reasons for a child to have a bedroom TV unless the child has just broken a leg and is confined to bed for a few months. I am quite certain that children need books and time playing with other children. What TV has created is a gigantic displacement wave that washes over all families.
So I'm with your husband on this one. If it were my decision, I would veto a bedroom TV.
But I sure would let your son know how much you appreciate his help and how proud you are of his performance in school. Parents, living in what I somewhat sarcastically call the Golden Age of American Consumerism, sometimes forget there are three kinds of rewards parents can give their children for good behavior. These are social rewards, activity rewards and material rewards.
I am convinced from watching children in families over many years that social rewards are the most important and the ones that mean the most to the child. What is a social reward? It is attention, praise, hugs and kisses from the grown-ups who mean the most to the child. Who are these grown-ups? First and foremost, the parents, but other relatives like grandparents and other key people like teachers mean a lot, too.
It seems plausible to me that with 3-year-old twins, you have been a very busy mother. It also seems plausible that you have not spent as much time with your son as he would have liked. And when we ask kids what they most want from their parents, contrary to what you might think, it is not another electronic gadget, it is more time.
I suggest you combine a celebratory social reward with an activity reward in addition to the birthday party. Take your son out for a day of special activities with you like lunch and a movie. Not the whole family, just you. Spend time at lunch telling him how proud you are and how indispensable he is. Have your husband repeat this exercise and spend a day of one-on-one with his son.
I would also add a material reward as one of his birthday presents. Figure out what the best TV you can afford would cost and put it with great flourish and ceremony in your son's college fund.