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iQuestions Faculty, Ted Baehr 
 
 
Question: 
 
How much TV should my child watch? 
 
Answer: 
 
Parents often want to know how much television their children can 
watch, because they’re swamped by all their own activities. We live in 
an age of so much clutter and distraction that the television too often 
becomes the babysitter.  
 
You would never hire a babysitter who killed, maimed, mutilated, 
stripped, yelled, and screamed in front of your children? And yet we’ll 
let them watch TV that does the same thing. 
 
TV needs to be controlled intentionally by the parent. Most of the 
medical associations say that, no matter what the age is, a child 
shouldn’t be watching more than an hour a day. 
 
Now, that is very tough, so I’m going to give you a way to deal with 
this. 
 
If your child wants to watch a television program, you say, “That’s fine 
with me.” Pick out the program in advance and make sure it fits your 
standards.  
 
Then I’d like you to write a review of the program. Whatever it 
happens to be—the new Disney dance show, or whatever else—you 
write a review.  
 
 
 
When you get the review done you look at it and then you can choose 
another program to write a review about.  
 
Believe me, this will slow down the process of watching television 
tremendously.  
 
The children will start thinking about what they’re watching and they’ll 
get engaged in it. It will start the process of taking a system that just 
bypassed many of the levels of learning and engage them to think 
about what they’re watching in a creative way.  
 
Then they can actually judge what they’re watching, be discerning 
about what they’re watching, and now make wiser choices the next 
time.  
Baehr -2- 
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