Why I love my children watching TV

Actually it isn’t for the obvious reason although, I do use the TV to buy me a couple of minutes here and there to quickly do a job such as putting the dinner on. But that’s not the primary reason for my love.

No the reason I love my child watching TV is for the fact that it has made him very knowledgeable. At times annoyingly so! Many people have commented many times, that he is beyond his years and want to label him as clever. Personally, at this moment in time I do not want to label him as clever as I do not want this aspect of him to be pushed and exploited through the school system. However, there is no denying for a child of his age, or any age, he is able to retain a lot of information and recall it at appropriate times.

People often assume that I spend all of my time teaching him at home and restrict his playtime so that I can push him academically. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The reason he is so knowledgeable is because we watch Cbeebies together. Being the BBC the programmes are educational and teach him (and myself) lots of new things from all of the different areas of the curriculum. We often discuss what we see whilst watching and share our likes and dislikes. Another fact that I hadn’t realised that I appreciated until recently is the fact that there are no adverts. Whilst flicking through the channels one morning my husband discovered Paw Patrol (his new favourite cartoon that he watches at the childminders) on Milkshake. Milkshake has an advert every so many minutes and all of the adverts are filled with expensive plastic toot! Don’t even get me started.

As mentioned above, he often surprises me with how knowledgeable he is such as when we were walking and I commented how hard it was to push the pram as we were going up a hill.

He said, “Don’t be silly mummy this isn’t a hill, it isn’t steep enough, no this is more of an incline.”

My jaw actually dropped open and I must admit I looked at him thinking wow where did that come from? After all, he is only three. For the record, I was well within my rights to comment/moan about the fact that it was hard to push the pram, regardless of the angle of the incline, as it contained his sister, a load of shopping, his bag, my bag and my son riding on the buggy board!

He caught me out with his knowledge another time when we were out and there was a picture of an ape on a poster.

He turned to me and said “Mummy Ape’s climb up into the tree tops and break off leaves and branches to make a nest and then they sleep in it.”

“I replied with no darling, you’ve got that wrong, birds do that, not apes.”

“No it definitely is apes mummy. Google it.”

OK I say and take out my phone and google it to discover that he is absolutely right apes make nests in trees and sleep in them! You could have actually knocked me down with a feather. Where did you learn that I asked? From the TV. Of course you did.

It is also worth noting, before anyone tries to nominate me for the worse mother of the year award, that he doesn’t watch that much TV in a day. It is often on in the background but he’s not one to sit and watch, probably as it’s always on it’s not that bigger deal. So he plays and runs in and out of rooms and every now and again stops for 5 minutes and watches and then returns to his games and charging around.

#TV #watchingTV #TVtime