Managing TV Watching
“Mom, can I watch The Family Guy?” asks my almost 12-year-old son as he unties his soccer cleats in the car after practice. “Pleasssee? Everyone in school has seen it.” There he is -- that insidious guy -- “everyone,” -- the child all children trot out to buttress their arguments about seeing age-inappropriate television.

Ahh, managing our kids’ television diets. It ain’t simple.

Parents bump up against these "what’s appropriate?" decision points in leaps. The first is the leap to the TV itself. Parents write to us all the time asking for good “starter shows.” Sooner or later, they settle into a diet of PBS kids' TV with sprinklings of Disney and Nick Jr. -- mostly shows that teach social and educational skills. But just as kids start watching, so must the parents -- watching the shows, watching the reviews, and watching the hours spent sitting on a sofa starry-eyed in front of the TV.

The next leap catapults kids into Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Saturday morning cartoons, and The WB (at least according to the ratings). Things start to get more problematic for parents. Here kids become more influenced by role models. Thus, they are more prone to commercial messages and susceptible to ads for junk food and network promos that are sometimes so off-base for the Saturday early AM squad that it leaves us lunging for the remote.

The shows -- mostly TV7s -- tend to feature lots of cartoon violence, thus introducing the important discussion parents have about the need for kids to “use your words” instead of your fists or dropping a piano on a foe to solve problems.

But the biggest leap comes somewhere around age 11 when kids start sampling evening fare on TV. As prepubescents, they are getting a glimpse of an adult world. "Are The Simpsons okay for my 10-year-old?" people ask. "How about The O.C. for my 14-year-old?"

The answer is going to be different for everyone. But we have two bits of advice: Do your homework and know your kid. Before turning on the TV, read reviews and watch the show by yourself. See how the subject matter matches up to your child’s current challenges and issues and maturity.

I decided, for instance, that I could actually use The Simpsons as a learning tool to introduce discussions of drinking, lying, laziness and the difference between fantasy and real life when it comes to the consequences of our actions. But that decision could easily horrify friends of mine whose kids are going to use my kid as proof that “everyone” watches the show.

In the end, the burden is on us, the parents, both to do our homework and to draw some unpopular lines when it comes to what our kids can and cannot see. It’s not fun, but it\'s important. We have to watch our TV as carefully as we do our kids. Me? I’ve just set my TiVo for Family Guy to see how accurate a judge “everyone” is of what my son can handle.