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Show Limit TV time for children By BETTY CONDIE President Utah Education Association Today's children spend about as much time watching television as adults do more than 4': hours a day. By the time they finish high school, they'll have put in 22.000 hours before the tubetwice as many as the 11.000 hours they'll, have spent in classrooms. HOW SHOULD parents deal with television? The best answer may be to put limitations on TV viewing and promote "posi'v" viewing. "POSITIVE viewing" means you turn on the TV only for programs prog-rams you have a positive reason to watch, then you turn it off. What you want to discourage in your child is the habit of turning on the set just to have it on. That's not easy. Television has gotten to be such a strong habit with most families fami-lies that it requires a lot of will power pow-er to shut it off and leave it off. YOU MAY be surprised to learn how much time your child spends watching TV compared to time spent in other activities. Have your child keep a log of daily activities and the time they take. Include activities such as attending school, studying, talking on the phone, eating, sleeping and, of course, watching TV. Then rank the activities in order of importance. import-ance. HOW MUCH time is being spent on the most important things? What ideas does your child have about changing her schedule? Perhaps you'll learn that she too. thinks that too much television is a waste of time. I would not argue fordoing away with TV altogether. Ten hours a week spent watching watch-ing quality TV programming can contribute to learning. More can hinder. |