I’ve never been a rebel. My stomach goes woozy when I bend the tiniest of rules, like jaywalking or coloring outside the lines. This personality trait seeps into my parenting. So when I noticed my 6-year-old wanting to binge-watch TV shows while we’re isolating, I worried about keeping the TV on for hours. I’d be breaking that long-standing rule that says, “Too much TV rots your brain and turns you into a zombie.” Alright, this might be an exaggerated myth passed down by parents wanting remote-control control, but the last thing I needed was a possible zombie apocalypse in our house.
Over the years, I’ve tried to honor the pediatric guidelines that suggest children should watch only two hours of TV a day. Since my son was little, we’ve had a system where alarms have been set to signal the end of screen time and alert my kid to the fact that it was time for some playtime or outside time. I was trying to have him reap the benefits of using his actual imagination or engaging in conversation with real live human people.
I figured following these rules meant a healthier brain for my little guy
He’d get better sleep and feel more connected with his family instead of a cold screen. Our system worked pretty well in the times pre-quarantine and disinfecting everything including our eyeballs. Then, of course, schedules changed — because worldwide pandemic — but that’s when another surprising change popped up.
As our lockdown kept us hunkered down, I watched my son’s taste in TV shift
He went from watching his 6-year-old stuff to his 3-year-old stuff. All of a sudden, the dulcet tones of "Oh, Toodles!" from The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse again graced our living room. Then, the loud roar of Kion from The Lion Guard echoed once more throughout our domain. I wondered how far down the TV programming rabbit hole he’d fall, and if I’d have to start binge-watching Friends episodes I’d watched while he was in utero.
I tried to keep our usual screen time breaks in place, but my son was temperamental and cranky when trying to divert his attention from the screen. At first, I thought it was just the normal “you’re not the boss of me!” kid angst, but I quickly understood his response had a deep and uncommon urgency. Assembling all the Blues Clues, I pieced together that my 6-year-old had found a way to cope with the stresses of this unfamiliar time by immersing himself in programs that felt familiar.
He was rewatching TV shows that made him feel safe
With many of our usual out-of-the-house options no longer, I decided to unleash my inner rebel. I’m giving the remote to my kid and telling him to go for it. The TV shows of my son’s youth are a way for him to cope with all the abrupt changes happening, and I want him to have this tool that connects the dots from a familiar time in the past to this unfamiliar time in the present.
While it may seem like I’m helping him tune out, I'm making sure to tune in and talk to him about how he’s feeling and support those feelings. Still, this summer I’m letting my kid watch as much TV as he wants because he’s using TV as a way to self-soothe — and so far, there’s no zombie apocalypse in sight.
