TV’s in childrens bedrooms

“This post is in conjunction with Reliant Direct but all thoughts are my own.”

This is such a controversial subject which has no right or wrong answer really. While many have opinions on this topic it is up to the individual families to decide what works best for their households.

Both Emmy and Harry do have TV’s in their bedrooms, it wasn’t something I initially planned to do and kind of just happened really. They haven’t always had them and certainly didn’t as babies/toddlers. They were introduced after starting school at some point in the later years of Infants as a way to help unwind before bedtime and as something to keep them amused and from waking me up far too early on a weekend. Reliant Direct conducted a survey of over 600 parents and 33% said they introduced TV’s into their children’s rooms between the age of 4-7.

Our bedtime routines have always been that they watch a programme/DVD of their choice and then have stories before bed. As they got older, bedtimes got later and that meant getting them to head upstairs would be later, and as working parents, we needed some time in the evenings to unwind and watch our own shows.

Having the TV’s upstairs meant I didn’t have to suffer whatever the cartoon or choice was for that month and could have a little time to unwind.

As the children got older their relaxing and unwinding time became more essential especially when they’ve had busy days at school and are tired from after-school activities, now they can choose to watch TV in the peace and quiet of their rooms after school, with no arguing over who wants to watch which programme, and on a weekend they wake up and pop on what they want to watch and I have often found them snuggled up together watching a film together.

We do have time limits though, not so much on the weekends but on school nights they have to switch off their devices at set times, they can then read or in Harry’s case I read to him or Alexa reads him one of his Audio books which he listens to until he falls asleep. They don’t fall asleep watching TV and if I left the TV on they would just stay awake watching episode after episode into the early hours – We often have family movies nights on a Friday evening where I put on a movie and Harry and myself sleep downstairs, on these occasions I have to turn off the TV as he will just stay awake until I do no matter how tired he is.

As well as limiting times the TV goes off I do sort of limit what they watch in a way – none of our TV’s in the house are plugged into aerials, we don’t watch or have access to live TV, so all is streamed on a 4K TV or via the Chromecast plugged into the TV. We subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Video and Disney+, and the children have their own profiles on Netflix for which I have age restrictions set up, and there are programmes they aren’t allowed to watch, for Emmy when she was younger he was banned from watching Horrid Henry as she would always try to copy some of the naughty behaviour and started calling her brother “worm”.

Some of the parents surveyed (44.7%) by Reliant Direct said they used the TV in their children’s rooms to help relax their children who then fall asleep watching. I do think it depends on what they are watching whether this would happen, Harry watches YouTube mainly these days and enjoys watching gamers playing Minecraft, this certainly wouldn’t relax him into going to sleep as they mainly just shout at each other and are very loud, while Emmy, on the other hand, watches Friends and comedy shows on repeat so giggles far too much to fall asleep while watching – even though she is now on the 12th repeat of Friends and knows all the words off by heart!

Having had TV’s in their rooms for so long now I don’t think they would like it if they were to be removed, in fact, I’m sure they would have the biggest tantrums over it but I have no intention of removing them. It works for us and for them, and also has the added benefit that I am able to work in peace when they are on school holidays for a few hours. They know I still have to work so are able to entertain themselves for an hour or two then we head off out for family fun once I have done enough for the day.

Do your children have TV’s in their rooms? Do you have screen time limits in place?