A Sign My Child May Be Watching Too Much TV

Okay, I'll admit it. I am not the perkiest person in the morning, not by a long shot. Which leads me to a problem. My daughter who is 3 tends to get up around 7 am, long before my preferred wake-up time. She will come bouncing into our room and demand that I get up and get her her morning yogurt (bad habit we started long ago). After we have a discussion on manners, I drag myself out of bed and head downstairs to get the oh so coveted yogurt. Once my task is complete, the next request is for Sprout TV which I happily oblige so I can get on with making the coffee. This tends to be the routine, day in and day out. That was until one day earlier this week we overheard our child sitting in front of the mirror, stating

'Do you have 5, 10, even 20 million dollars in credit card debt? Is your spending out of control?'

WHAT?? Where would she have gotten that from? And then it dawns on us, Sprout TV.

You see, Sprout TV tends to play commercials geared towards adults in the morning which I guess makes sense if they figure that adults watch TV with their kids in the morning. But really, is a commercial on credit card debt really appropriate for preschooler programming in the morning? I don't think so, credit card debt is not something that should worry them or be even in their vocabulary as such a young age. I'm not saying, don't teach your kids about the value of a dollar, I highly encourage that. But pandering on child TV for bad monetary practices, I think a tad inappropriate.

This leads me to the other issue in that we tend like many parents, let TV play the role of babysitter when we are rushing around to get lunches/dinners made (or coffee). This particular incident has reminded us of this very fact and we are becoming more cognizant of the amount of TV our child watches and have imposed limits.

So maybe it has worked out after all.

Also, I think the commercial about baby reading on Sprout TV in the morning is a bunch of bull.