This post is in conjunction with Reliant Direct but all thoughts are my own.
We all have those things we say we will never do when we are parents. I always swore I’d never give my kids dummies – same as Steve… but Jack ended up with them! Another thing we said we wouldn’t do was put a TV in our children’s room/rooms but we also changed our mind about that – it’s amazing what changes when you become a parent. We have friends who have a completely different parenting style to us and that is fine!
But why should you or should you not put a TV in your child’s room? Whether the TV is a brand new 8k tv or a set that has been passed down through the family, there are many reasons why you might or might not want one in their room.
It is obviously a personal choice and some parents are completely against it altogether whilst some are perhaps a little too easygoing. Ours are allowed them but with strict rules in place for their use. I have recently been looking at some research regarding TVs in children’s rooms and thought it would be interested in learning a little more.
Reliant Direct recently commissioned this research and are an online electrical superstore who sell a variety of electrical goods. They sell high quality goods for as low a price as they possibly can.
Let’s take a look at some of the information they found out:
We introduced a TV into Jack’s bedroom at around 4 or 5 years of age – the same as 33% of parents who introduced it between the ages of 4 and 7. He was only allowed to watch it during the weekend and school holidays and had a strict time he had to turn it off and we have followed this rule ever since.
The kids are currently sharing a bedroom so are sharing a TV and still only watch at weekends and school holidays. But when we move in a few weeks, they will have their own rooms and we will be letting Olivia have a TV in her room too. Whilst having a TV in their room is not necessarily ideal, it isn’t something that particularly bothers us due to the rules we have set in place.
Some people choose to use the TV to help soothe their children to sleep – 45% in fact. We don’t tend to let them fall asleep to it, we give them a specific time to turn it off – but if they fall asleep in front of it before that time, then it does not bother us.
We were lucky enough that neither child have ever asked for a TV but would you believe that many kids start asking for a TV when they are in infant school? I do believe that if we hadn’t put one in when we did that we would probably have had them asking us though!
How about you though? Do you believe you should or should not put a TV in your child’s room? Does your child, in fact, have one in their room?