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join:2007-04-04
Downingtown, PA
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1 edit | reply to joetaxpayer
Re: For Me.... said by joetaxpayer:said by Titus Pullo:Of course, you can't blame it all on TV; a great deal of credit goes to the parents (and the kids), but I distinctly remember him saying the kids read books from the library rather than watch TV. You can't deny the connection. -- The strongest correlation (with scholastic success) is for reading. Second is the amount of time spent actually talking to parents. Doing enough of those two doesn't leave time to veg out in front of the TV. I agree in full with your post. On a side note; I think if all parents managed to put a treadmill in front of the TV, and with a minimum speed allowed, told their kids they can watch all they want, that years from now there'd be a strange correlation between good health linked to high TV watching. Absolutely agree. We made/make it a point to read to our kids. They have more books than shelf-space to put them on, and my oldest kids have taken to grabbing books from me and my wife. We even set up a special bookshelf for them - basically they're books that belong to either me or my wife, but which are appropriate for them to read. They know that anything that's on that shelf is fair game, and they don't need to ask permission to read it (now if I can only teach my oldest to actually put the books BACK, we'd be on to something  ). Any other books of ours require permission from us for them to read.
BTW, as a correlary to what you wrote - kids follow your example. Want them to do well in school? Get them into reading (my kids all have voracious appetites for books). Want to instill that love for reading in them? Then YOU need to read. My kids see me and my wife reading stuff all the time - books, magazines, newspapers, even stuff on line. We love to read, and it passed on to them. We don't just read to them (the younger ones that is), but they see us reading for our own entertainment too.
One last point - regarding your conversation item (talking with your kids) - another thing that we stress on this front - eating together. There are definitely activities that, from time to time, get in the way of sitting down together, but whenever possible we make it a point to ALL sit down to dinner at the same time. Eating on the go is strongly discouraged, unless you have no choice. Want to have those conversations with your kids? You need to eat with them. Heck, we'll even have dinner at off-times to adjust for schedules - one night we'll eat at 5:00... the next at 7:00. |
