The Benefits of Parents Limiting Children Watching Television Programmes

Should parents limit their children's time spent on watching television programmes? This is a debatable topic, as it has many comments on this issue. However, parents should limit thier children's time spent on watching television programmes because by limiting it, it will bring a lot of benefits. The benefits of parents limiting their children's time spent on watching television programmes are protecting their children from harming themselves, preventing them from picking up violent behaviors and developing better social skills.

Firstly, parents often allow their children to watch television programmes because they see it as allowing their children to be more creative. When children are exposed to certain television programmes such as "Art Attack", or "Sketch and Colour", they become more creative because they learn how to draw and make beautiful crafts. In addition, they can even act out the actions of their favorite cartoon characters as a development of imaginative acting skills. Parents consider this as creative, as children are able to immitate these actions. However, mant parents are not aware that allowing their children to be more "creative" by watching television programmes can actually post some danger issues. Children are too young to differentiate reality from fantasy. They can get too carried awayby those actions acted by their favorite cartoon charactes and ended up harming themselves. For example, they might jump off from a balcony thinking that they are superman. Creativity need not be instilled via television programmes, parents can send their children for drama classes or even art classes to develop their children's creative skills.

Secondly, parents do not limit their children's time spent on watching television programmes because they think that their children are actually becoming more knowledgeable. They think that their children are able to learn moral values or everyday skills to cope with the society. For example, the television programme "Fat Albert" actually teaches children how to cope with their tasks in everyday life by giving examples of problematic situations and solutions. Even though children are able to learn something from television programmes, children cannot differentiate between what is acceptable to learn from the television programmes and what is not. The contents of the television programmes are not strictly censored. Therefore, children can also learn violent behaviors. Children might perceive that beating up people to get what they want is right. Therefore, they will pick up violent behavior as they see it is the right way to solve a problem.

Thirdly, parents have this misconception that allowing their children to watch television programmes could enhance their children's social skills. They perceive that by allowing their children to watch television programmes enable their children to pick up social skills such as how to start a conversation with others by just simply sharing about what they watched on yesterday's programme. This may seem to parents that allowing their children to watch television programmes, children are able to converse effectively with peers and extend their social networks. However, what parents may not know is that this might cause the opposite effects instead. As the images in television programmes changes every split second which fills the empty gap in children's mind, they are actually not given enough time to process the informations they grasp and discourage children's independent thinking. Instead of enhancing children's social skills, it causes difficulties in communicating with others. Television programmes do not involve a two-way communication. How can the children learn to pick up social skills when they television is doing all the talking?

In conclusion, it is undeniable that there are some benefits for parents to not limit the time spend on watching television programmes. However, the disadvantages of not limiting children watching television programmes outnumber the benefits. Therefore, parents should limit their children's time spent on watching television programmes in order to ensure their children's safety, ensure that their children do not pick up bad behaviors, and also prevent them from having difficulties in communicating with others.