A really interesting discussion between some HE parents came to an abrupt end yesterday mid-debate due to children needing us.  We were talking about feeling guilty when children choose to watch tv - guilty that we’re not providing enough more stimulating stuff to tempt them away from it, and guilty when we make the most of them being occupied by the electronic babysitter to do housework or *gasp* have a minute or two to ourselves.  What I feel is that this is just real life.  Not all parents are able to be on hand for their children 24 hours a day without having a bit of time each day when they don’t have to be entertaining or educating their children.  The other thing I feel is that, when you home educate, the interactions you have outside of tv-watching time are so rich, and there are so many more opportunities to have those interactions that they will easily negate any possible negative effects of tv-watching (e.g. diminishing imagination, difficulty in concentrating on things etc.).  What you’re left with is all the positives of tv - ideas of new activities; new knowledge; a chance to just ‘chill’; opportunities for discussion etc.  In other words, lots of useful things you can use to inform some of the time you spend not watching tv. 

In truth, though, children won’t want to watch tv 24 hours a day every day - they’ll get bored of it, just like anyone gets bored of anything they’re doing the whole time.  When we make it clear we’re not happy with our children watching tv, they feel more drawn to it, as if they feel they need to watch as much as they can before we come and take it away from them.  On the other hand, when we express no feelings about it one way or the other, they’ll watch it for a certain amount of time; then Mopsy will get bored and start playing something, then Flopsy will go and turn the tv off and join her playing.  They turn it off at meal times because they enjoy eating together too.  Of course if I do make the effort to do some exciting activity, they’ll come and join me doing that too, but I’m really talking here about what children do with tv if adults did nothing at all.  They obviously don’t watch tv when we’re out.  But when we’re at home we’ll often have a day when they seem to watch loads of tv but, just as often, we’ll have a day when it doesn’t go on at all.  What I’m trying to say is that it all evens itself out - they self-regulate it just like they self-regulate everything else in their lives.

I’m often asked what I would do if one of my children chose to watch tv or play on the computer all day long.  My answer is:  It’s so unlikely to happen that it’s not an issue, but if it did happen, I’d let them because I can be fairly certain that the next day they’d make up for it by watching none at all.  And if they did watch it all the next day too, at some point they’ll get fed up and it won’t get switched on for days.  I think this situation is probably different for children who aren’t granted full autonomy in their lives.  I believe that children who practice self-regulating get very good at it but that children who, for instance, are in school being told what to do and when to do it, can lose the skill of self-regulating.  They get high on the freedom of school holidays and go loopy and make their parents believe that this is what is normal for children and that they could never home educate if they had to live with their children day in and day out like that.  But the reality is that autonomous children aren’t manic like that - they spend their entire lives on a much more even keel.  They’re used to freedom so it doesn’t go to their heads in the same way.  So when you say to a child ‘ok - you’re in charge of your life’, if they’re not used to it, they’ll probably go a bit mad on it for a while (I’m guessing this is the phenomenon of deschooling - needing to watch loads of tv and do ‘nothing’ for weeks and weeks) but will eventually learn how to self-regulate and will practice the skill until they’re brilliant at it - and what a wonderful skill to take into adult life.  Maybe these children are less likely  to become addicts of one sort or another when they’re older (be that food, or alcohol, or work or whatever). 

I don’t know for a fact that that’s what happens, but that’s what I believe and it’s what I see in my own young children and in older autonomous children.