The children's television questionnaire has now been removed from the site.

Thanks to all of you for completing this questionnaire. We had a fantastic response, 265 of you took the time to reply.

Almost all respondents said that they allowed their children to watch between 1-2 hours a day.

Three quarters of you said that you knew what your children were watching all the time.

Most of us (over 70%) trust the programme makers and allow our children to watch a full choice of programmes aimed at their age group.

However, a significant percentage (28%) have issues with certain programmes shown during the 'after school' slots on terrestrial television. Several programmes were singled out for comment as being inappropriate for young children:

• encouraging bad behaviour;
• a lack of respect for adults in programmes results in cheeky behaviour at home;
• features fantasy violence / karate moves - several parents reported young children 'practising' these moves on siblings or parents after such programmes;
• supernatural content - parents report 'nightmares' from programmes with content including 'witches'.

This quote summarises parental concern regarding exposure to the wrong types of programmes:

"More and more, children are having to grow up sooner. My son has always been very placid but is now fighting quite aggressively with his little sister in the characters of the cartoons he has seen."

Overall though there was almost unanimous agreement that the benefits of TV far outweigh the negatives.

These quotes capture the general view:

"In today's society I simply couldn't let my 4 and a half year old play outside in the same way as I did. TV has therefore become the alternative to me for part of the outdoor play my daughter cannot have."

"TV in a controlled and shared environment allows my daughter to see things that our environment does not contain, in particular ethnicity, culture and religion."

Finally, praise for those channels that only show pre school content:

"I particularly love the cbeebies channel - this channel is so good for my 2 and 4 year olds, lots of educational topics and always safe content."

If you would like more details about this questionnaire please contact the site at admin@forparentsbyparents.co.uk

Your views and comments

I found this page while looking for evidence of anyone else having our experience. We have found that banning our daughter(9) from watching any cartoons has an incredible effect on her behaviour.

She had been watching a programme called "Recess" regularly and several other programmes of that type where any authority figure is to be mocked or ignored and her attitude to her parents was awful.Cheeky,aggressive,and quite often thoroughly unpleasant.Since we banned her from watching those programmes, what a difference!

It is such a relief and a pleasure to have our lovely little girl back,just when we were beginning to fear that she had gone for ever. I truly believe that this aspect of television has not been sufficiently explored before now. I am even beginning to wonder how accidental it is that these programmes have the effect that they do.There are an awful lot of anti-family people working in the entertainment industry and I would not be surprised to find that some of the programme makers are well aware of the conflicts their programmes can cause.

Pete

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