[troggi]

Originally Posted by J Harker

Sorry Prince, I wasn't meaning to cause you any upset, and I can assure you I wasn't making a laughing matter of it. Simply pointing out that it's far too late to ensure that he's exposed to no tv at all. While I don't think for a moment any child should be plonked in front of a tv 24/7 I also don't believe that in moderation there is any harm to be done.

As a case in point my two, now grown up children watch very little in the way of television. The youngest, my son is constantly on-line but up to the age of 5 was a "Thomas the Tank Engine" nut and used to copy the faces of the trains. My daughter, on the other hand, only watches select American TV series like "Dexter" and "Hannibal" because she is a horror nut to the nth degree and went straight from Disney films to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". She now watches more horror films than I do! I must add that, although not dissuaded from watching TV, neither of them were actively encouraged to watch it and did not have TVs in their own rooms until they were 5 or 6 years old.

I can see the good Prince's POV here, and there is research to back it up, but I don't believe in imposing draconian measures on my children. We did actively encourage them to get some actual real life friends and outside interests; my daughter was the naughty one who hung around with skaters and other ne'er-do-wells, my son is so straight you could use him as a rule and took up Scouting to such an extent that he is now a Beaver Leader and actively involved with his "other family" the Scouts. Maybe, like with certain drugs, it needs an "addictive personality," lack of imagination or some other sort of mental condition for a child to be adversely influenced by television, I don't know.

I do see children on a daily basis at work who I believe are adversely affected by the utter pap that they watch; stuff like "Big Brother," "X Factor," and soap operas. I firmly believe that a lot of our social ills can be traced to these programs with kids emulating their soap heroes by over-reacting and drifting from one imagined crisis to another and believing that the road to prosperity is through an audition with Simon Cowpat!