When Should You Put A TV In Your Child’s Room?

It’s an age old question that has existed at least since the days of portable televisions – ‘when is the right age to allow your children to have their own TV in their room?’ All children want a television, and will certainly ask for one, but does that mean they should actually get one? Is having a television a good thing for children, particularly in the room where they sleep.

Reliant, who specialise in bringing the cinema system into the home with oled 4k tv have recently conducted their own survey looking at the thoughts of parents in regards to TV’s in their children’s bedrooms, and, it has to be said, while some of the results are not surprising, others certainly are. 75% of children want a TV in their room – I can only believe that the other 25% already have one! 43% of parents wish they had waited before putting a TV in their child’s room – this could be down to maybe watching TV too late at night, or even due to watching inappropriate content.

One of the statistics that did shock me was that children start asking for their own TV when they’re in infant school. This seems so young, at that age my own son was happy to watch television with me in the living room, and completely zoned out when CBeebies was turned off. I guess as more children get gaming systems, X Boxes and Play Stations, and at a younger age, they may need their own television in order to use this without hogging the family televisions.

I find the idea that children use the television to help them go to sleep a little more disturbing. Surely a lovely storytime with a parent or older sibling before sleep time would be much nicer than dropping off to the theme tune of Eastenders?

Ultimately, I think that children in the later years of KS2 (aka the junior school), are probably of an age where they can have a television of their own. At this age, your child may well also have their own tablet, or their own gaming systems which require a television to be used, so this would seem a sensible time to add a television to their room, but maybe with parental controls. Make sure to limit their viewing time to a sensible allocation (maybe two hours), and remove the remote before bed time to ensure your children are still getting a good amount of sleep.

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