Kids watch too much TV say scientists

​Love to get your thoughts on this. What do you think - how much is enough?

I think the guidelines are about right.  We have no TV in our house and now that the BBC have started to charge for watching on iplayer we don’t watch that either (we used to watch a couple of hours a week before the charges came in).  My children are 7 and 11 and they are allowed one hour of screen time a day.  My eldest uses this most days but my youngest is much more sporadic and will go days without watching anything. 

I got a book out the library recently as I was worried about my eldest and screen time.  He had to have it first thing in the morning and if he didn’t spent the day wanting it, I felt it was ruling our days.  About the same time we had to go away (unexpectedly) and didn’t have access to any screens for a whole week and it completely resolved itself.  Now he fits it into the day whenever it works for everyone rather than first thing,  it makes our mornings much pleasanter too!

I think this is the hardest aspect of parenting in the 21st century.  Unlike previous generations we have no one to turn to who has been there before.  I know that as a home educator I don’t have the peer pressure that other parents will get if their children are in school.  As adults I think it is really important for us to model the behaviour we expect of our children, if we are constantly on our screens we will have a harder time saying no to children and it being accepted.