I think tv depends on the content and the kid and clearly your parenting style. My kids watch tv and I am a mom that does not think tv in and of itself is bad. It is what you watch and the choices you make about when child should be outside playing or inside watching tv. We love food challenge and watch it all the time as a family. Seems pretty safe. The show we watched a few weeks back had a lesbian couple on and my 7 year old asked me why a girl had a wife. We had quite an education that night but it was important and even though she is young we gave a basic idea about it and did not avoid. Tv can lead to important conversations about all kinds of things.

I do think conversation about tv is as important as the choices we make about it.

Soooo glad this was brought up again- for the record I looooved Renee's article. I have also fallen into the Glee trap. Granted my kids are quite young, but I was thinking..."singing and dancing- they'll love it! and the rest will be over their heads!'' Wrong and wrong. I seriously could not turn the channel fast enough. Although this isn't racy at all, one of the characters on Glee said ,"Can you believe Brittany still believes in Santa Claus." This could have cause irreparable damage in the Hirsch household. I had to do instant damage control... loudly stating, " well that is silly, why wouldn't she believe in Santa Claus- what a Scrooge!" That seemed to work.

I struggle with family appropriate content and usually go for an on-demand super kid friendly show from Nick Jr or Disney. but then sometimes I'd like to be a little entertained as well.

I am not sure if American Idol is appropriate or not but it seems to pass the test- it's not perfect, but we don't need to talk about Steven Tyler's bouts in rehab to watch young adults sing.

Most everything else at bedtime/bathtime doesn't seem to be appropriate.

That is so true.. Even "safe" shows are a risk. Dancing with the stars was great the first season then the talk was all sexual the outfits hot skimpy. It was like basic dancing was not going to be enough. Now we don't watch it with all the kids. My older one does.

Well, we aren't quite in a position to worry about this just yet, but it's not something I look forward to. We tend to do DVR or On-Demand for pretty much everything my kids watch, so they rarely even see a commercial (and when they do--look out! They are entranced :) And we're still mostly into animation around here, although my 6 year old does want to watch animated shows that are made for older children, like Batman, or even Sponge Bob. They'll occasionally watch an episode of Top Chef or Amazing Race with me, but I would never watch Glee while the were awake, although they say they LOVE Glee b/c we listen to the cd's in the car together :)

I did laugh a few weeks ago when my 6 year old asked me if I had heard of a show called "Wipeout?" I said no, so we looked for it and set the DVR to record it, because the boys in his class loved to talk about it. What a silly show--he cracked up watching it, but it's no longer on our DVR, that's for sure! But he continues to watch the one we recorded....

Forgot about Wipeout- my 6 year old thought it was hysterical! Good Eats is also a show that we can watch together and is entertaining for me as well.

My daughters love "Wipeout", though they're a bit older. I find it really cheesy and think I lose brain cells simply from listening to it, lol.

Obviously, many of these things you want to keep your children unexposed to for as long as possible. However, as kids age and their social environment changes, they're going to be exposed to these things whether it's under our watch or not. I was incredibly disturbed years ago when my then 4 year old came home from the gym daycare singing "who let the dogs out". Point being, they get exposed to these things even when we're not around. At a certain age, you have to allow them exposure to open discussion.

I'm inclined to agree with Pam (again, lol) that it's more about the amount you allow them to watch and that it depends on the child. My situation is a bit different as my children spend a significant amount of time between three households (mine, their dad's, and great-grandparents). When they're under my care, they're not allowed more than an hour each per day. Though with everything we're involved in, they usually don't even have enough time for that. It also helps not having cable channels. I only have about 12 channels on my tv (no cable box), so when there's nothing appropriate on tv, it's not on. Plus they tend to get bored easily with a lot of the shows on regular tv.

You know what is kind of funny about this? My 6 year old has been getting more involved in the sports on tv, watching with my husband. And a few times int he morning, when we get up, he turns on SportsCenter (already?!?!) which seems harmless enough, right? Well, the lives of those bad-boy athletes are very often the headlines of SportsCenter, and the recaps and scores of last night's games come later. So, I need to watch closely to see what he's seeing.

He also has a lot of trouble distinguishing what's real on tv. Like I said, he mostly watches animation, which he understands isn't real. But he's confused how some show are real (The Amazing Race) while others aren't. It makes me realize how important it is to pay attention, becasue what we take for granted is all new to the little guys.

With our schedule the way it is, there isn't a lot of time for the kids to watch a lot of tv. Unless it is rated R or TV 14 for sexual content, I am okay with them watching as long as one of the parents are in the room. They tend to stick to Disney but with the way the kids on their shows talk to their parents, I am not sure those are better than King of Queens or Everybody Loves Raymond. I use tv all the time as a discussion starter. When my oldest was about 8, he walked in while I was watching ER. There was a gang shooting and a drug overdose on there and it opened a discussion about gang violence and why doing drugs is bad. Teen Mom is another one that lends itself to discussion. Does it accurately portray how hard being a mom is or does it glorify it because they are on tv? I don't care what it sets out to do. It opens a discussion here about how hard it really is and how that is not a path I want them to take. Kerry brings up a great point about SportsCenter or even the games themselves. My oldest has been watching for years and I remember thinking it was great that he was so into catching up with his sports or watching with his dad instead of wanting to watch something violent or that was suggestive. The relief was short-lived when a beer commercial came on with women wearing barely any clothes and men fighting over the last bottle of beer. I let my husband handle that one. I agree, Julie that they are going to be exposed to things whether we like it or not.