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How To Stop Your Kids Watching Too Much TV, Spending Hours On Computers, Wasting Days On The Game Boy And Endlessly Texting Friends

Probably one of the longest titles of a book, but completely encompassing it's content. Giving you a clear understanding of the impact of not only television, but screen time in general.

While most parents will restrict television, they might not be as hard on computers, Nintendo, and so forth. Most children today will have a lot more immediate access to other entertainment screens, often kept in their own pockets.

An interesting fact is that when a group of children watch a single child play a video game, it is not a social interactive exercise. In this situation the screen dominates and is the only object that the children are interacting with, not each other.

This book gives you practical advice on how to limit the time your child spends in front of a screen, how to switch off the screen without tantrums, but also how to deal with internet bullying. It gives a good insight on all the new media inputs our children are exposed to, inputs we often are not aware of, such as new sites for social networking or chats.

There is also advice on how to talk with your children to help them understand and block out the peer pressure and commercial bombardment they get. All this from an early age to teenage years, the authors recommend that small children should not watch more than two hours of television a day. It is reasonable, but if you calculate you will probably realise how often you overstep those recommendations. Spending longer time than that will have repercussions on both a child's development and physical health.

It is probably a book that will make you feel guilty and maybe even devastated. You probably have frequently relied on the television for a bit of free time to do necessary chores in peace. Most parents probably use the television to get the kids out of the way, finish up what they have to do fast and be able to spend time with them. But there are alternatives, and hopefully you will find solutions that suit parents and children.