For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 12, 2010

Kids: Me, Me Me, Me, Me!

A TV with dials in a digital age, how quaint…time for a second tv and family sanity

thraceguy, probably one of the old strips - and well no, the kids probably watch way too much TV anyway.

“Unfair” means, “I don’t like it.”

I have to tell DH daily that life is never fair when you have small children. Men don’t even know the half of it.

In my days as a kid, my parents were the boss and didn’t have to explain anything to us kids…because I said so, was as much of an excuse they ever used.

When I was a kid, all that was on at 6 was the news, all three channels.

And it’s no use trying to tell anyone from a later generation what it was like - right, Lewreader? It’s literally a different world now than it was then, and if you weren’t there, you can’t be led to imagine it. (The kids just roll their eyes and go back to tweeting and texting.)

My brother and I got a refurbished b&w TV to watch on the 3rd floor attic with rabbit ears. It got 1 channel, but that had the 3 Stooges - bliss!

And when I said “why”, my dad said “because I said so” and that was the end of discussion.

When we got our first TV there was only 1 channel that we could receive.

As long as you’re being reasonable, stand your ground, John, or else you’re raising spoiled brats.

I remember life without a remote also. Even though we were sitting around watching TV, we still got a little exercise.

We had 4 channels, and I still remember what they were. NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. And if dad was home…his choice.

TV went on for Howdy Doody, then Dad came homeand watched the news, and fell asleep in his chair. The tv was ours again.

When we were the age of Michael and Elizabeth, we did not have a TV. It wasn’t until my little sister was 5 and I was 10 that my parents bought their first TV, a black and white set. Even though they could well afford several, they never had more than 1 TV in their house at a time. But, we had lots of books.

Ladyfingers86- I disagree -The kids shouldn’t have a TV of their own, especially not in their own room.

TVs are the scourge of creativity.

My son never had his own TV until he was a teenager. We didn’t buy it. He made it from found items including an old computer monitor.

Families is some rural areas only have the stations that come in, cable is not even an option. Families in some rural areas do not even have cell service. Not everyone lives in the middle or edge of large towns. I had this realization when I stopped to buy berries at a road side stand and mentioned something I’d see on the internet. The farmer had no idea what I was talking about and said they did not get the newspaper and didn’t have internet.

@Thraceguy, time for no TV. The “TV News” is worst of all. Kids cartoons are more informative.

30 years ago, I think TV new tried to be objective, but any reporter has to select which facts to report as important, and that selection is biased. In a newspaper, the facts important to the reporter and editor would be at the front of the article, but there was room for additional facts at the end of the article which might change the readers conclusions. The headline was totally biased, but you could get at least some of the other side at the end of the article.

TV news has very little room for content, and is essentially a stream of misleading headlines - even when the reporters have the best intentions. Today, the intentions are very suspect as well.

Was it not Karl Marx who said “Religion is the opiate of the people”? Of course that was before the advent of television.

It’s a different world. I’m old enough to remember when we got our first TV, you got the signal on rabbit ears, and unless you lived in a big city, there were only one or two channels available. And the parents had control of the channel if there was more than one. You didn’t get live pictures of a disaster half way around the world the minute it happened. My grandson is growing up in a world where information is just there, kids have cell phones with Internet capability, and there is bandwidth to support blogs, tweet. facebook and other means of personal expression. It’s kid’s stuff right now, but it’ll mature as they do and they need to be a part of it to participate fully in the world they’ll live in.

Like Lewreader, we got our first family TV when I was a teen. Dad broke a hole in the wall between kitchen and the “den” (spare room with seeting facing the TV)-finished with drywall and with a turntable in there- we could watch from either side and hear in both. There were 3 channels and PBS and they were not on 24/7. Now I have TVs everywhere in the house for guests, but only 2 with digital converters for my cable and I have the movie tier, the specialty tier (with TLC and all the food channels). It IS my major entertainment and I have TiVo on both of those as well.

Stand your ground, John! No matter how much they whine and complain, it’s better to teach your kids now while they’re still young that life isn’t always “fair”! If you cave, they’ve got you and they’ll know it!!!!!

Btw: This never happened when I was a kid. We only had one t.v. back then and no cable. When Dad got home from work and wanted to watch the news, we didn’t whine or complain and call him unfair … we quietly surrendered and went to our room and found something else to occupy our time with because any “lip” from us would have gotten us a spanking otherwise.

Agreed, GretchensMom…

Why is he even attempting to “reason” with them?

Here’s what John should have said:

“Okay, I’ll go get my strapping belt… and then we’ll have a talk about who gets to watch what on the television….”

John has just been shown…..”how to get to Sesame Street”….. =)

Whenever my kids said, “No fair!”, I’d usually reply that life isn’t fair - get used to it. I didn’t have to fight Dad for the TV, as he worked 2nd shift, plus had rentals & a small farm. Sundays were for church & napping. The only time Dad watched TV, because of his schedule, was usually while I was at school or after I was in bed. But we never got more than 4 channels anyway. Thankfully, Mom & us kids enjoyed the same type of shows by the time we had a TV that could pick up more than one channel, and she was boss if there was a disagreement. At our house, we don’t even get TV - I’m just too much of a tightwad to want to pay for satellite, and don’t care enough about what we could get for free if we got a converter box. Our sons have gotten used to using the TV to watch videos, and they’ll use the high speed filtered internet to watch the few shows they’ve discovered like “Mythbusters.” (Discovered while visiting grandparents with cable.)

You need to offer the kids an alternative, John. Like getting out the PlayDough or colouring books or jigsaw puzzles! Makes my kids forget that there is such a thing as TV :)

We didn’t have a TV until I was in school and then well, I was in school – so only got to watch it in the afternoon. My Dad didn’t get home from work until after I was in bed, so he only monopolized the TV for baseball on the weekends – and I learned to really like baseball.

We still have only 1 TV in my house - and most of the time nobody’s watching. Do have 4 different computers though, (plus the PlayStation). and wifi…