The children who NEVER watch TV
And why not having a TV in the house has become the latest status symbol for pushy, middle class parents
IVE r- old Shantia Henly sounds, to many, like the perfect child. She speaks English, Spanish and Welsh, listens attentively to stories, is very observant and sleeps like a dream.
‘After school, we usually go straight to the park to climb trees, feed the birds or ride her bike,’ says her proud mother Janina.
And when Shantia wants to unwind? ‘ She listens to Beatrix Potter audiobooks borrowed from the library.’
So far, so perfectly middle-class. But Janina, 36, attributes her daughter’s intelligence neither to tiger-mother tactics nor private tutoring.
Shantia’s abilities, believes her mother, are largely down to the fact that the family do not own a television set.
‘I strongly felt that not having a TV in the house would mean I was more present as a mother,’ she says. ‘I also did a lot of research into child development and learned how sensitive young children can be to screens.’
Janina is far from alone in banning the box. Today, it seems, the ultimate status symbol and hallmark of a pushy parent is in not owning a television set.
Such parents are catching on to what a lack of TV supposedly says about your intellect. It suggests parents who enjoy high-brow pursuits, rather than bingeing on box-sets. It also indicates the same of your children. So what do their children do instead of being glued to a screen? Roam free, read, or enthusiastically complete their homework, of course.
Janina, a personal assistant from Swansea, who grew up in a ‘normal home in Hampshire with a TV in the corner of the lounge’, got rid of her own when pregnant with Shantia. She insists, though, that she’s no pushy parent.
‘If anything, it’s me that it pushes,’ she says. ‘I have to interact and engage with my daughter all the time. And her life includes a lot more play and freetime outdoors because of that.’
However, not everyone in the family agrees with her decision. ‘ My parents are concerned Shantia may feel left out if her friends are chatting about something they’ve watched.’
SHE insists peer pressure isn’t an issue: ‘ So far, it hasn’t caused any problems. When the Disney film Frozen was all the rage, we read the book instead.’ Now Shantia is at school full-time, Janina — who doesn’t have a smartphone or tablet, only a laptop which she uses when her daughter is in bed — admits that policing the ban is trickier.
‘Unfortunately, she has watched the odd programme at school, such as Jack And The Beanstalk last Christmas, and i t scared her because she i sn’t used to the over-stimulation.
‘They have occasional cinema trips at school, but I don’t allow her to go. I will take her myself — but not until she’s much older.’
Statistics show children aged four and over spend an average of three hours and 40 minutes a day watching TV. Leading psychologists have called for under-threes to be banned from watching screens.
Psychologist Dr Aric Sigman has written papers for the British Medical Journal on the impact of screen time on children and believes there’s a lot to be said for taking a leaf out of Janina’s book.
‘Increasingly, links are being made between excessive screen time and child health and development, ranging from obesity to concentration, cognitive development and even poor school grades caused by a lack of sleep.’
These are things Janina never has to worry about. Instead there are the academic bonuses which are the stuff of every middle-class parent’s dream: a trilingual child who is fully tuned in to any task she undertakes. Ten-year- old Rafael Pena, who is also growing up without a TV, is similarly a source of pride to his aspirational mother, Veronika.
Not that Veronika is latching on to the trend: she declared the family’s Herefordshire home a TV-free zone 21 years ago, determined her four children — daughter Isis, 23, who now has her own home, sons Eiran, 18, Rafael, ten, and Kiyan, five — would not watch the box.
It was the 44- year- old fitness instructor’s own TV-free childhood which prompted her to impose the same rules on her brood. Although her parents owned one at the family home in Berkshire, it was only to enable them to see the news.
‘Far from feeling like I missed out, my childhood was enriched,’ says Veronika, who lives in Ross-on-Wye with her partner Arvin, also 44, a registrar for a charity.
‘I remember, as a child, knocking on a friend’s door to see if she wanted to come out to play, only to be told, “No, we’re watching TV!” I just couldn’t understand why she would rather do that than be outside having fun.
‘When I became a parent, I wanted my kids to have a real childhood, with hours spent climbing trees and riding their bikes.’
ONCE a week, ‘as a treat’, Veronika allows her younger sons to watch a ten-minute clip of an old children’s TV programme such as Bagpuss or Camberwick Green on her laptop. But she admits it’s often more trouble than it’s worth.
‘They always want more,’ she explains. ‘If it leads to bad behaviour, then they forfeit the chance to watch it the following week.’
Rafael loves swimming, filming wildlife and playing ball games with his brothers. Kiyan enjoys making mud pies, playing in his sandpit or on the trampoline, and building Lego. And the result?
‘All four children have good attention spans,’ says Veronika. ‘Even Kiyan, at five years old, will spend a good half hour playing with Lego. And Rafael will practise playing his violin without me nagging him.
‘Other advantages are creativity. Both boys have always been complimented by teachers and other parents for their imaginative flair, for their musicality and for their sense of adventure.’
Natalie Lamb, 42, hasn’t owned a television for 18 years and was adamant it wouldn’t creep back into her life when she became a mother.
‘I didn’t want my kids watching TV and zoning out,’ says Natalie, a therapist, who lives in Sussex with her daughter Treya, 14, and son Lao, 11.
She says her aversion to television stems from feeling that her own father was more interested in the TV than her when she was a child.
‘He’d stare at the TV for hours, be it watching Wimbledon, rugby or soaps. I wanted my children to have my attention and to learn the art of being good conversationalists.’
But Natalie acknowledges that enforcing this role is increasingly difficult in this digital age.
‘ My daughter’s had a mobile phone for safety since she started getting the bus to school at age 11,’ she admits.
‘And I know that she does watch YouTube on it, which frustrates me. But the rule she has imposed on herself is that she has to switch the phone off at 6pm every day.
‘I don’t want to be a control freak but I do want my children to think about their use of media.’
Natalie admits that TV-free life is not without its battles.
‘Lao went through a phase of wanting to watch Minecraft footage as well as YouTube, and Treya wanted to watch American teen drama Pretty Little Liars, which is a load of mindless rubbish.
‘There is only one other child in Treya’s year who doesn’t have a TV, but she doesn’t get teased. Her friends are just amazed.’
Lao, though, does sometimes feel he misses out.
‘My friends talk about football matches but I don’t know the teams or who the players are. I don’t tell anyone at school so that they don’t tease me.’
However, Natalie admits she is anxious about t hem f eeli ng left out.
‘I’ve cracked on a couple of occasions and offered to buy them a TV,’ she says. ‘Thankfully, they insisted they didn’t want one.’