Television is not the best form of entertainment for our children. This we know. If it were up to us our children would be constantly enveloped in books, crafts, pretend play, and other such mind expanding activities during the day. However, television is still there in our lives for one reason or another and our children certainly do enjoy watching a fun program on TV. I've recently discovered the joys of TiVo and all the advantages it offers to me as a parent. Advantages such as eliminating commercials, having ready a prerecorded list of educational children's shows, and being able to filter out the rest of unwanted television.



We've had TiVo in our home for about a year now and I have a two-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. Before consenting to having satellite TV, with all of its hundreds of (and mostly useless) channels, we had very little, if any, television in our lives. Starting out as newlyweds we decided to have no cable television at all. We only watched rented movies and built up a healthy collection of shows to watch on our DVD player. It was fun and easily done. Then came a baby. I didn't work and was home most of the time with our first baby girl. So we decided to get the basic channels for about ten dollars a month. Then, came our baby son, and as my daughter also grew up we started to discover the world of children's television programming and it was nice to have some healthy shows that our kids enjoyed watching occasionally. When we eventually subscribed to TiVo, I was very skeptical of having that amount of available television in our home. However, I was surprised to discover that TiVo does in fact offer many benefits to the scrutinizing parent like me.

First of all, TiVo can completely eliminate commercials. This is great when we want to watch our favorite crime show late at night or we're watching a movie on television. We just forward through all the commercials to get to the program. But even so much more beneficial is the elimination of commercials in children's programming. With TiVo, you can record Little Einsteins on the Disney Channel or Curious George on PBS and have no commercials. This is wonderful because most commercials really are unhealthy for children of any age, especially very young minds. A commercial's fast paced, high movement nature has been linked to facilitating HDD and destroys children's attention spans. When children are exposed to constant high paced commercials their mind gets used to that sort of viewing and has trouble calming down and being able to do things like reading a book or sitting down to do their homework. So when parents can eliminate such destructive "noise" from their children's TV programs, both the parents and the children are much better off.

Just as you have the ability to eliminate commercials from TV viewing, you also have the power to completely eliminate ALL unwanted channels and programming. You can literally pick and choose what programs you want your children watching and eliminate all access to regular, unedited television. Instead of having your children just turn on the TV in the morning and flip through unending channels of programming they shouldn't be watching or hearing, looking for something interesting to watch, you can have a ready list of fun, yet educational shows for them to pick from - free from all the "crud" and commercials regular television mostly has to offer. Your children are happy because they have all these pre-recorded, commercial free, programs to choose from and you're happy because they are picking from a list of shows of which you already approve, and when it is over, it pauses, prompting the children to get up and do something else.

We, as parents, know that television shows, even the best ones for children, aren't always the best past-time activities. Yet, when they do watch television it's nice to know you can still be in control of what information goes into their young, impressionable minds.