4 reasons to keep your home schooled children away from the T.V.

Here is a guest post by Faige Kobre.

Many parents, I have learned, have a problem limiting the television consumption of their children. It would therefor, seem to be reasonable to believe that parents that home school their children may have an even more difficult time doing so , since the television temptation is in front of their children's noses all day long. If however, you home school your children and you realize how detrimental most T.V. watching is then it will motivate you to keep your children as far away from the T.V. set as possible.

There have been many studies done that have documented the terrible effect television has had on society and children in particular.  One of the most shocking things to me was to learn that television programmers don't think of television as existing to inform, entertain  and to educate, but that it exists totally to sell and to advertise products. Its purpose is to gather an audience and to create a feeling of hunger and need in us. Is it no wonder then, that children of today are so bored and needy. As a result commercialism  is the end result of too much television watching. The more kids watch the more they want to buy.

The second glaring study about too much T.V. watching is how it impairs cognitive development. Kids stay up too late watching shows, don't get enough sleep and cannot concentrate ins school. The TV shows are very quick moving and have overstimulating images and fast paced action. It is very difficult to keep children attention after being subjected to so much of this. Not getting enough sleep and being overstimulated just kills the children's attention levels.

Television also impedes imagination. Kids who watch a lot of television have less imagination as it has been proven to depress creativity and decrease imaginative play. Parents that want to encourage their children's creativity would be best off giving them all kinds of creative crafts that will stimulate their creativity and not suppress it. Even if you don't have a specific educational philosophy like  the Reggio Emilia philosophy,  nobody wants their children's cognitive levels to be impaired. This probably applies more to parents that home school, than parents of children in public and private schools as they are being home schooled to get the many benefits it brings. Don't ruin the benefits of the home schooling you are giving your children by allowing them to spend too much time in front of the TV.

Today's guest blogger feels strongly that television has very little place in homeschool. In our homeschool the television is off most days of the week. If it pertains to our lessons then we will watch an educational program on Netflix, such as Sid the Science Kid. This past year our entire elementary science curriculum was based around Beakman's World.

So, I am not at all opposed to using the television in a limited way for educational purposes. But I do agree wholeheartedly that constantly plopping the children down in front of the television for hours on end is not beneficial.