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iQuestions Faculty, Ted Baehr 
 
 
Question: 
 
I want to monitor what my kids are watching but also give them 
freedom.  How much is too much parental control? 
 
Answer: 
 
That’s a good question, because in this age we’re a little bit too afraid 
of being engaged in our children’s lives. 
 
Cornell University, when it said that nine out of ten children abandon 
the values of their parents, stated that the major reason is because 
parents are too lax. Parents don’t engage enough in their children’s 
lives. Really, the word that they use is the parents are too “tolerant.” 
 
The fact of the matter is, you can never be too loving. Loving means—
whether you’re taking Dr. James Dobson’s book, Tough Love, or Bill 
Cosby did a series of commercials where he said if you love your 
children you don’t tell them to eat ice cream, you tell them to eat their 
broccoli. If you love your children you don’t tell them to forget about 
brushing their teeth and go to bed whenever they want. You tell them 
to go to bed early, do their studies. You can never be too loving, you 
can never be too engaged.  
 
Children—we know this not only from real life and engaging with 
children, but also from a lot of studies—want their parents to be more 
loving. A lot of the behavior where they’re being angry, where they’re 
being demanding of things, is actually acting out and asking their 
parents to be more loving.  
 
 
When I was speaking—after being on Focus on the Family—at one 
point doing church, one of the girls said, “My father’s too busy. He 
comes home late, he’s tired. He watches TV, ends up watching Leno.” 
 
I said “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and she said “I 
want to be an actress.” Everybody laughed in the church, because they 
got it. She wanted to be an actress so her father could look at her and 
pay attention to her.  
 
Just think, if we take five minutes a day of listening to our children—
more than five minutes—the five minutes I use is because Cornell says 
we don’t take five minutes to listen. We take a lot of time saying “do 
this, and do that.” 
 
But listen, think about it. Help them understand the consequences of 
their actions. You can never be too involved, too intentional, and too 
loving.  
 
If your time is taken up by doing other things, bring in a grandparent. 
Grandparents are great for taking the time to being loving with their 
grandchildren.  
Baehr -2- 
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