Homeschooling and Television:

The Slippery Slope to Raising Boob-Tube Headed Couch Potatoes

I am surprised to see from my journals that, in the first three days of homeschooling-with-Camille, two of them included watching a video! I hope that the reason I gave in my journal-keeping—that the kids were sick—explains this, because I honestly don't recall having the television on very often during weekdays....

As a young mom and homeschooler, I had read research conducted at the time, and all the findings seemed to point out that television watching is too passive to be included in the best learning environments. Kids need to move, play pretend, and interact, and if they are sitting still in front of a TV set for hours at a time, passively soaking up whatever is on, then they aren't learning nearly as much as they should be. (Not to mention, they aren't nearly as healthy and fit as they should be.)

There have been some research findings I've encountered since those early homeschool days that say some positive things about television as an educational tool, but at the time I basically felt at least a little bit guilty every time I let the girls watch TV.

Of course, even us concerned parents tend to take a moderate stance about things like TV, computers, and sugary foods rather than an extreme attitude of NO TV, ever, NO white sugar, ever, and so forth. I do remember that I always felt like I was trying to skate a fine line between too much TV (by definition of the words “too much,” a bad thing) and “too little” TV in which it becomes a wonderful-forbidden-enticing mystery (also a bad thing, in my book).

I also notice that, according to my journal, the kids were pretty active during the movie (especially the one girl who wasn't sick), and the girls used their play as an inspiration to watch the movie and used the movie as further inspiration to play pretend. They talked and sang, interacted with each other and the story, moved around, and did art.

Not passive.

Not boob-tube heads.

Not couch potatoes.

And, 20+ years later...
How do my kids interact with television now?

Nowadays, I can report that TV viewing never takes precedence, for my kids, over interesting activities with friends, but thanks to Tivo and Hulu, we can watch things that are important to us any time we wish. Lindsey chooses to live without a TV set but enjoys a wide range of international movies and sometimes gets sucked into watching a few shows when she visits television viewers. Mindy watches favorite shows, including dramas, comedies, non-fiction (mostly science) shows, and “reality” shows (such as cooking and dance contests), but she still multi-tasks while watching. Today, for example, she exercised in the morning and embroidered items to sell in her Etsy shop in the evening, both while catching up with her Playlist on Tivo.

Some of my kids may watch “too much” TV, at least at times. But they definitely aren't passive viewers. Not boob-tube heads. Not couch potatoes.