A Guide To Monitoring Childrens Televison Programming

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Doozers 1Like it or not, television is inescapable. The key is learning how to use it wisely especially when it comes to our impressionable young children. Television is best used when it’s a learning tool. Talk about the message the show is trying to send – what are they learning? Letters? Counting? Problem Solving? Make sure it offers value. In addition to monitoring what they watch we have a helpful Guide to Monitoring Children’s Television Programming.

PreNegotiate TV Viewing Lengths

It’s much easier to say you’re 30 minutes starts now or your viewing time is up at 8 – versus negotiating midway through viewing. AAP guidelines recommend that children only watch one to two hours of TV per day. Another alternative is to limit TV to 1 hour on school nights and 2-3hrs a day on weekends. 

Set Hard Limits on When it is NOT Okay to Watch TV

Some good examples of when it’s not okay:

  • During Meals
  • Homework
  • When Parents Aren’t Around
  • When Grades are Poor

Use an Instant Streaming Service

Growing up (before instant streaming) the house rule was to have all our homework done before we could watch TV. My parents made that rule with the best of intentions – that we would get our homework done before becoming distracted by TV. But the motivation worked a little too well – we ended up rushing through our homework in order to watch our shows. By choosing TV shows that can be instantly streamed by services like Hulu, you’re mitigating the amount of influence TV has on your kids schedule. 

Keep A Short List of Acceptable Shows

In addition to pre-negotiating your TV viewing lengths, times and limits  you should also have a list of acceptable shows. We just added a new show to our list: DOOZERS. The animated preschool series focuses on four Doozers kids. They’re a team of best friends dubbed “the Pod Squad,” Spike, Molly Bolt, Flex, and Daisy Wheel. The Pod Squad loves to “DESIGN, CREATE, and INNOVATE.”

Doozers

These Doozers are DOERS – they put their ideas into action! Our preschoolers follow along to help the team as they take on challenges like designing their very own Doozer Derby racing car, fly in a jetpack, or build a giant life-sized gingerbread house?! 

The Show is the first Hulu Original for kids and comes from The Jim Henson Company (Dinosaur Train, Sid the Science Kid) and DHX Media – the creators of another of our favorite shows SuperWHY. 

Connect with Doozers Online – #Doozers
Visit the official website
Visit Hulu Kids
Like Hulu on Facebook
Follow Hulu on Twitter, Google+ and Instagram
#Doozers

This post brought to you by our friends at Hulu. All opinions remain my own.

31 thoughts on “A Guide To Monitoring Childrens Televison Programming”

  1. I recently read or heard somewhere that the recommend amout of TV time for 2 year okds and under was none. Dont know how realistic that is..

    Reply
  2. My kids have set limits too. They get one hour of games and one hour of tv. And games includes everything: ipad, ipod, xbox, netflix, whatever.

    Reply
  3. It is so important to establish boundaries on screen time! My daughter only watches a little bit, and we stream on the TV while I am sitting nearby working. She loves the Doozers show on Hulu!

    Reply

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