How Much Television Should My Child Be Allowed to Watch?

As much as they want. In general children that are restricted in TV watching habits when young, over-indulge as adults. But with the proviso that they learn at least one musical instrument and/or language - practice comes first. And homework comes first. And at least one winter sport and one summer sport. And at least one individual sport and one team sport. And training comes first.

And reading. Read to your kids. Listen to them reading. Have books available. Make weekly visits to the public library. Model reading in front of them. They will read by preference over watching TV some of the time.

And interactivity is better. Computers > Console games > TV. And you will find that kids prefer computers. People who say that all screen time is the same are just wrong.

And make regular time for your children. Let them choose the activity. They will choose to do something with you over watching TV.

And they can't watch anything with advertisements in it.

Wait, you have children? How old are you? :P Besides, anything is okay in moderation. Just maybe a couple hours max a day unless they haven't finished their homework yet (what kid gets homework, but that's beside the point).

I think that it's the Quality/Content of TV shows -vs- Quantity/Amount of TV being watched you should be concerned with.

As much as they want, at long as it is not those crappy reality TV shows.

If you have a young child, start them off with quality programming so they wont get low standards in what they will accept to watch. Have them watch these shows

• Dexter
• True blood
• Burn notice
• House
• Stargate (many different stargate series)
• And lots of anime

These shows are of very high quality and don't have new episodes all the time. This will keep your kid from watching too much tv as when they start off with quality shows, they will have a higher standard and wont be able to sit at a tv all day watching crap.