I love to watch certain television shows.  Mr. Right and I love our tivo and love settling down in the evening to a show or two before going to bed.  That is usually all we watch is a show or two a day.  Occasionally, we will turn the news on in the morning or midafternoon while working from home but not very often.  This is coming from a political junkie – I do not watch a lot of news on tv.  I know that when a major news story breaks out I can quickly become a news junkie and want devour every little detail about it.  So, I do my best to keep that temptation at bay.

We have several shows that we watch.  Most All of them do not do much to add value to our lives other than entertainment.  Currently some of our favorites are: Chuck, CSI: Miami, NCIS, The Mentalist, and Samantha Who.  They provide an escape and we enjoy that escape. 

We limit our children’s television viewing.  They are allowed to watch on Friday afternoons and Saturdays.  They cannot watch all day on Saturday.  Since we have limited the amount they can watch pretty much their whole lives we rarely get an argument when we tell them to turn off the tv.  They know which days are “tv days” and which are not. 

Today I read an interesting article about researcher at the University of Maryland.  The University of Maryland analyzed 34 years of data and found that watching television can make you unhappy in the long run even if it makes you feel good in the short term.

The thing I found the most interesting about this study is that from our own experience, we have noticed that the more television our children watch the more fussy, irritable, and restless they become.  They still are fussy on days when they do not watch tv.  We have noticed that we they reach their limit on tv they start to argue with each other.  When they turn it off and step away from the tv for a few minutes, they seem to calm down and play more. 

The article reinforces and reminds me that we need to watch television in moderation and responsibly.  We do tend to make sure that the high priority tasks on our to do list are complete before we settle down to tv watching in the evenings.  We need to make sure we continue to do this.  We need to make sure we continue limit what and how much the children watch.  Most importantly, Mr. Right and I need to strive to set examples of how to live responsibly to achieve our goals so that our children will emmulate those habits later in their lives. 

What about you?  Did this article make you think twice about your tv viewing habits?  What are your favorite shows?  Do you limit your children’s tv watching?  Do you limit your own tv watching habits?

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